I recently received my Xl-1 back from Mack Service after a head replacement. Happy that the camera was capturing video again I took it out to the field, only to realise that the Audio coming in from the standard XL1 Mic input was incredibly low. In order to counter that I set all the audio options to manual and cranked up all the settings to the max in order to get some amount of sound - all be it with hiss.

Right now I have the MA-100 hooked on the camera with a sennheiser mic and XLR in and the sound levels look good.

I've checked the standard XL1 mic by putting it on another camera and it works fine. Any thoughts on what could be going wrong with the standard stereo camera sound??

Thanks in advance for your help.

Cheers,
Sandesh

Is the mic input setting by any chance in the MIC ATT or line position? That will cause very low levels.

Is Mack service an authorized Canon service outlet?

That's the first thing I checked, because the problem seemed to be just that, but unfortunately it wasn't. I played around with the switches, changing it from MIC TO MIC ATT and back again to no avail.

I had a Three Year Warranty with Mack Camera and the first time I sent it in, they forwarded the camera to Canon service saying that it was not a job they can do there (I had to get the door/eject assembly replaced). But this time they performed the replacement of the head after ordering the part from Canon. I am not sure if they are an authorized canon service center..?

Could the replacing of the head lead to such a problem? The problem was definitely not present prior to the repair as I had been using the camera intensively filming birds and recording calls with the On camera mic.

Cheers,
Sandesh

The XL1 needs to be disassembled fairly completely to replace the upper drum assembly (heads). In the process of reassembling the camera a ribbon connector may have come loose or one of the mic switches is not set properly on the pin. It's easy to overlook. Send it back with complete documentation of your problem, perhaps record a section of low audio and include the tape. Good luck.

Jeff

Thanks for the information Jeff. I'll send it back in to see if it can be fixed.

Thanks again.

Sandesh