Hey All,
I have an issue with the audio on the gl1 being "overloaded" for lack of a better term. Monitoring is nearly impossible in either a loud reception or club setting, and when I get the tapes home, the bass overloads the audio and clips. I also have a Pana GS-120 that doesn't do it. I was wondering if you guys set the Mic Att. setting on every loud shoot, or is this a problem with everyone? thanks in advance.

Bill
www.grantphotovideo.com

Hey Bill, I used to own a GL 1. Was a pretty good camera. Everytime I shot a reception I would always set the MIC Att. I learned this the hard way. Looks like you have too. There may be some other solutions to this. On the other hand, if you are not using the on camera mic, I suggest investing in a small portable mixer of some sort. This way you can control all levels from peaking out. GOOD LUCK!

Always set the attenuator to on with that camera. James is right, a mixer with a limiter will help quite a bit. You have to experiment with the settings. It's counter intuitive, but give it a fairly hot signal with a pretty aggressive setting on the limiter.

MIC ATT on all the time .. there has to be a really REALLY good reason for me to switch it off. I had the "experience" once and that taught me the lesson .. I now also have a 60 quid Behringer 10 channel mixer - it's got high, mid and low range attenuation . .works for me ..

MIC ATT set to ON is standard practice for recording in loud venues. Believe that it even suggests this in the user manual.

Ran some tests a couple years ago.

With MIC ATT "OFF" you will see AGC effects kick in at around 93 dB sound pressure level, and can expect waveform distortion to set in around 110 dB SPL

Setting MIC ATT "ON" gets you about 14 extra dB sound pressure level head room with the internal mic, and 20 dB more with an external mic.

Not that Don needs my agreement, but I did similar testing and got similar results on my GL2. A strong signal can overload the input to the cam's preamp, and compensating with gain controls further down the audio chain can't fix it. MIC ATT protects the input.