A few audio questions

[SF Geek]

What is this Pad cable or padded cable that is supposed to lower line levels?

I noticed that changing the audio level in camera seems to do nothing. Is that only for mic level inputs?

Has anyone gotten useable sound from a wireless mic receiver plugged right into camera?

[Sound Sorcerer]

What is this Pad cable or padded cable that is supposed to lower line levels?

I noticed that changing the audio level in camera seems to do nothing. Is that only for mic level inputs?

Has anyone gotten useable sound from a wireless mic receiver plugged right into camera?

Please read:
http://www.sounddevices.com/notes/cameras/red-one/
:sorcerer:

[Stuart English]

I noticed that changing the audio level in camera seems to do nothing. Is that only for mic level inputs?

Correct, audio level adjust is microphone pre-amp gain adjust.

See the Operations Guide for reference levels when using the pad cables or not.

[Adrian Van Rossum]

Finally got a chance to run a test with with our four Samson UHF Series One wireless microphone transmitters and receivers using the padded Red mini-XLR cables. The camera (original audio board - no upgrade) was set to microphone input on all four channels, level on the Samson receivers set was to -10. Popped the proxies on the Final Cut timeline and hey presto, four channels of audio appeared instantly and I could isolate and tweak each one as required. Audio ran a little cold on the camera's default gain setting (from memory I think it was 32dB) with the padded cables and our microphones (Senheiser shotguns with K6 powering modules), so we cranked the gain up by only 4dB and were sweet. It was just a quick test to check all four channels were active and coming through on the proxies. Sucessfully exported .wav files from the proxies and brought them into Premiere and Audition without a hitch. Ideally you would use a line mixer (Sound Devices etc.) and set the Red's audio to line, but I wanted to test a quick run-and-gun audio scenario where there is no sound guy, boom operater and the like. Certainly do-able if you can't stretch to a dual-recording system.

[SF Geek]

Thanks for the info Oz. I'll be trying it out with some lectrosonics. Now I just have to figure out a way to handhold the Red in a cinema verite style.