I now hear no difference between the sound on the JY-HD1OU and my much more expensive Ikegami ENG camera, using the same Lav's that is. So I think it would compare favorably with any prosumer cam sound.

Paul

The Audio is unbalanced, right? How would I go about making the audio balanced? Would I need something like a MixPre?

Glenn -

Thats's a really good question. I would think it would only cost a few dollars for the circuit to make the audio balanced. I can't figure out for the life of me why the didn't make it balanced.

In a book called Producing Great Sound for Digital Video the author includes schematics for building your own circuit using radio shack components. I wonder if the circuit would fit inside the little XLR box they give you with the HD10.

Any comments?

A friend of mine who did audio for Spike Lee explained me the whole balanced into unbalanced. Of course, I forget, so I'll ask him again.

As to why JVC did that, it's probably just a matter of costs.

heath

The last page of this month's DV Magazine has a detailed explanation. The way I understand it, in it's simplest form is this:

In a balance ciruit, the audio comes across two wires 180 degrees out of phase (negative and positive voltage). Think of two waves that are mirrors of eachother. Electrical noise on wire would appear as a spike on these two waves. A balanced circuit ignores these spikes, since the circuit can only 'see' the current on the wire if there are both a postive and matching negative signal.

To create a balanced circuit all one would need to add is a small transformer of sometype to filter out the noise. This type of ciruit was orginally invented by the phone company a long time ago.

My electrical engineering terminology is a little rusty - so please forgive me. I hope this helps.

I understand it's three wires providing a balance. The third one provides a back-up, much like how most power sockets have three instead of two prongs.

hwm

I thought the third wire was a ground wire -- all properly engineered circuits should have a ground, but I could be mistaken in this case.

Yeah, you're right! D'oh! on my part...

hwm