I'm helping out a friend on a short film he's putting together on the XL1 and I have a question about level meters. We're planning on using an AT shotgun mic and running it through the denecke AD 20 and into an mp3 player/recorder via optical inputs. The only problem is that we don't have any way to monitor the levels. I've tried looking strictly for level meters online but I'm coming up with nothing. Any suggestions?

And what's the frequency range for normal human speech? I found that info somewhere online but I can't remember.

Thanks

I'm curious as to why you'd be looking at frequency range for speech in the same thread as metering? They're not really related in the wide view.
On the XL, average speech/dialog/levels should hit the small dot seen at the -12 mark, but if the speech/dialog goes from a whisper to a roar, you're gonna want averages lower than that. The biggest issue is to be sure that at no point do the meters on the XL exceed their far end indication, or that the meters ever hit the far end.
For the MP3 recorder, you don't have any meters on that at all? Odd that a prosumer device wouldn't have some indicator.
Beachtek and others make meters that you can access as an inline type of metering.
Hope this helps,

I have a SignVideo meter that works pretty well, but it runs off of the headphone jack. Without a meter on the MP3 recorder, how would you calibrate the external meter? I've heard of people having this problem with the Iriver. I'd be interested to know if anyone has solved this problem.

That's the whole problem, if the meter comes after any attenuation or gain device such as a headphone output, it's going to be a false signal.

I'm sure you're right, but so far it seems reasonably accurate with my minidisc. In fact, it reacts a lot more quickly than the minidisc meter, in addition to giving a stereo reading. If anything I'm probably setting my levels a little low with it. Not a perfect system I know, but better than nothing I guess. I have an AD converter that's pretty quiet, so I'm comfortable giving myself plenty of headroom.

You will meter your levels on the mixer. You are using a mixer, yes?

Many of the MP3 recorders do not even have level controls, let alone meters. They assume that you are controlling levels before sending to the recorder. Yes, I agree that's a BIG ASS-U-ME, but so it is.