Sennheiser and natural sound

[Jay Thompson]

Hi, sorry for the stupid questions but audio is alien to me. I thought I had read something about this at one time but I searched for an hour and a half and turned up nothing usable. Here it goes:

I have a Sennheiser ME66 K6 running to my MA200 .. Is there any way to use the existing on board mic supplied with the camera for 'natural sound' while using the Sennheiser for interviews?

Also, because I am using XLR, it only picks up one channel of audio, is there a way to record on both left and right channels?

Thanks

Jason

[Adrian Douglas]

Jason,

The question not asked is the only stupid question.

You can infact use both mics. The trick is to hook your MA200 up to Audio 2 on the side of the handle. Set Audio 1 to mic and Bob's your uncle.

By connecting into both L and R inputs you won't get true stereo as you are using a mono mic, what you will get is what is termed 'summed stereo' meaning identical L and R signals. To do this you need to get a splitter cable: one XLR on one end and two on the other. Try pro audio/music shops or if your handy with the hot stick, you could make one yourself.

[Ross Milligan]

Take pity on a simple photographer........but I cannot get your suggested configuration to work. My excuse is that I am not 'audio aware' and until now have only used the supplied onboard microphone that came with my XL1 on a point and shoot basis.

Having read the stuff on the Watchdog (although I do not admit to understanding it all - you chaps like your jargon) and read the previous posts, I bought the Sennheiser EW100 wireless system and a MKE300D. Now, I have read in the Watchdog articles that plugging the MKE300D minijack into the camera body switches off the XLR input on my MA100. This means that if I have the input selected to MIC I get the 300 and if I select Audio 1, I get the 100.

Still with me??

So how to get both at the same time. I tried moving the MA100 leads to Audio 2 on the handle - no effect.

My simplistic solution is to get a minijack socket to XLR lead and plug both microphones in to MA100 and ignore the camera minijack socket.

Does this sound reasonable or am I missing something basic?

[Nathan Gifford]

If you are trying to use all four audio inputs, you will need to use 12 bit audio. I forget which menu that is under, but you should be able to find it scrolling around the audio selections.

[Jay Thompson]

Thanks Adrian,

So by doing this I can record any natural sound at the same time getting the sound from the subject with the boom? Do I have to switch from 16 bit to do this?

thanks!
Jason

[Ken Tanaka]

Adrian: "...and Bob's your uncle."

Wha? Tha mus' be wunna thar Japanese 'spressions.

Ross,

I have also been sitting here scratching my head trying to work this stuff out. I'm about to get 4 hours sleep before heading off to film something in the morning, and have finally worked out what I was doing wrong. (At least I hope so or its less sleep for me tonight.)

Heres what I did:
I have gone into the VCR menu, and selected audio mode 12bit stereo 1-2. Then I have selected mic on audio one (the switch under the white door) so that my onboard mic is picking up ambient sound, and I have plugged my radio lav into the ma200 which is plugged into the audio 2 inputs on the side of the handle.
So far I'm following the instructions from the earlier post in this message and its not working.

Then I realised what I did wrong. I had plugged the ma200 leads into the audio 2 inputs on xl1, BUT as the lav mic running in to the ma200 is going to be recorded on the stereo 2 tracks, I naturally plugged the mic into the audio 2 xlr input. Stupidly I was forgetting the leads running into the audio 2 inputs were the ma200 onboard leads that run from the xlr audio 1. Once I had plugged in the lav mic into the xlr audio 1 the sound was getting into the camera fine.

All I had to do was press the audio monitor button until it showed st 1+2 and I could hear both mics at once. Now in the morning I can offer the client either 16 bit lapel mic or 12 bit lapel mic and onboard ambient, depending on whether or not he has audience participation in his lecture.

I hope some of that made sense, as I am really tired right now and cant seem to explain things too well.

I will also be getting a mini jack to xlr adapter so that I can run the onboard mono mic into audio 1 (left) and the lav into audio 1 (right) in full 16 bit sound in the future, but at least I have this temporary solution to get 2 sound sources in.

Adrian

[Nathan Gifford]

Yes you will need to put the audio monitor in mix to hear all 4 channels. You may need to be somewhat careful making judgements through the headphones. You may not have enough gain, especially if you are using manual gain settings.