Hi!

I'm shooting a concert and I was wondering if someone could give me a tip on the audio settings I should use...

It's Beethoven, concert for piano & orchestra N 3 in Do minor.

I don't have a specialized microphone for this kind of thing, only the built in one and a NTG-3 i will have to use mounted on my camera.

I was thinking of setting the NTG-3 at one channel and the built in on the other one, but I don't know what TRIM setting would be appropiate. For example, I was told that -35 for the NTG-3 recording voices would be OK, but this is another case.

What about the built it mic? In fact I put on the tittle "audio settings" alone first because this is a general question I have about the TRIM setting, I was told by a sound expert that it's always better to change the TRIM and leave the volume alone. Is this true? I should just get closer to 0 if it's too loud and the other way if I need more "volume"? To determine when I have it right, should the levels ideally indicate almost red but not red or be around the middle of the display?

Thanks for the insight!

Ivan.

How far away will the camera be from the piano? (And presumably the orchestra behind it.)

How "live" is the room? If the room isn't terribly "live" (reverberant) and/or if you aren't TOO far away from the piano, I would use the built-in mics. You are going for a "natural stereo" sound presumably, and you won't get that with two very different microphones left and right.

Try to get there during a rehearsal and set the levels at -10dBFS on the highest peaks. And OF COURSE you DO NOT use "auto-level" for any kind of music, particularly classical.