red epic sound

[Zakaree Sandberg]

I rarely record Audio into the camera, but recently got a report that the sound was scratchy and didn't sound good..

had all the settings working. the levels below peaking, not too sure what could have gone wrong on camera end.. anyone have any ideas?

 

[axel ebermann]

sort of,

from my experience the red/epic has way less headroom than other cameras. you get slightly over
that little bar and you are already on your descent towards purgatory (as in over modulated and scratchy).

quite a few sound guys feel that this is 'stupid' and and feel the camera has to bow to their will and basically set the
levels like they would on other digital cameras.

I always tell the sound guys to protect their headroom at all cost and come in 3db lower than they usually would.
whenever they listen there is usually not a sound problem

 

[Alex Frausto]

Were you feeding a true mic-level signal into the camera? Feeding a line-level signal, even a low level one, can cause issues with mic preamps, partly due to impedance mis-matches.

I doubt the camera preamps have less headroom than any other properly designed preamp.....just feed it the right signal.

 

[axel ebermann]

I can only talk from my experience of shooting hundreds of hours of interviews with this camera.

and if you feed it the wrong signal you would likely not just have a bit of a 'scratchy sound' issue.

Were you feeding a true mic-level signal into the camera? Feeding a line-level signal, even a low level one, can cause issues with mic preamps, partly due to impedance mis-matches.

I doubt the camera preamps have less headroom than any other properly designed preamp.....just feed it the right signal.

 

[Michael Dalton]

What are people using? the on board preamp, or something like a juice link or beechtek? I tried sound for the first time last night, but my rode NTG2 with a mini jack did not work (with a fresh battery in it), but when I plugged the same mic in a beechtek on phantom power through a xl1 cable it worked fine. Likely a bad cable, but is there anything I should know?

Also is there anyway to shoot 4 channels without the pro I/O. With an ABOX, I'd like to channel the first XLR to split into channels 1&2 at staggered levels, and then use a LAV in XLR2 staggered as well.

Can Avid AMA use 4 channels of audio? For those who render out to DNX or Proress, can any format use 4 channels other then DVCHD?

 

[Stuart English]

...is there anyway to shoot 4 channels without the pro I/O.

No, EPIC and Scarlet support : two channels (via analog Mic level inputs) from the Brian and two more channels (via analog Mic or Line level inputs) from the PRO I/O module, or four channels (via digital AES / EBU inputs) from the PRO I/O module.

 

[Marc Wielage]

I always tell the sound guys to protect their headroom at all cost and come in 3db lower than they usually would. whenever they listen there is usually not a sound problem.

I agree. But I'm also very skeptical of the sound section of any digital camera. I think you're much, much better off just sending a scratch track to camera (not just Red, any camera) and recording multitrack on a standalone audio recorder. Anything else is going to be a compromise, in my opinion.