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To-camera scratch/nat track audio solution? (ScarW)

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Duane Shrode

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Looking for a decent to-camera (Scarlet W) audio solution for one-man-band doc style shooting. I tried using a Zoom h6 as a mic/preamp and XLR to 3.5mm to the camera, but it's just too noisy and over-modulate.

Any suggestions? Experiences? Ideas for a budget solution?

Thanks!
 
what camera? some cameras have just horrible audio circuits (black magic) and not much to be done, but others can do quite well.
 
Scarlet W
 
I'm no fan of the H6, ultimately I think even at it's best, it is a bit noisy, but if you are experiencing over modulation, sounds like a potential gain mismatch somewhere. Ideally you would have the input gain on the Zoom set to a nominal level (dialogue reaches in the -20dBfs to -10dBfs range), output gain of the zoom high, and input gain on the Scarlet-W low. If you find that its not a setup problem and are still unhappy with the zoom, then upgrading to a better preamp would help a lot. I'm a little confused about the part where you mention "XLR to 3.5mm to the camera". Do you have the base IO with the stereo 3.5mm input jack or are you using one of the bigger modules with XLR audio inputs? If you have the XLR inputs, you should be using a standard shotgun mic plugged directly to the XLR. If you just have the Base IO with 3.5mm audio input jack, then use a camera top "video mic". you have to decide if you want to try and get good sounding dialogue or if not so important and ambiences are more desired. If ambiences, then any of the M-S or X-Y stereo mics will do. If dialogue is paramount, then forget the stereo mics and just get a mono shotgun. At the cheap end, the Rode Video Mic Pro or Sennehiser MKE are probably comparable, and have a few different options at different price points. At some point, if you really can't use a sound man with pro gear, your limiting factor is going to be the ok, but not great quality of the mic preamps in either these cheap camera mics or the audio circuits in the red module. Great preamps can be had from relatively inexpensive gear, like the new Sound Devices MicPre or Tascam DR-701D (beware the DR-70D - similar name, looks the same, but BIG difference in preamp quality)... which can record separately, but also feed you camera reference sound, and can even take timecode from the camera and automatically start and stop the roll - making post ingest a breeze.

**also keep an eye out for reviews of the Zoom F1** preamps on the H4 / H6 series of units are bad for production environment (high gain) but perfectly suited for their original intended markets (music with high SPL / low gain). The F4 and F8 units from Zoom had surprisingly good preamps, so if the new F1 unit uses the same preamp topology, it should be perfectly suitable for great results.
 
Thanks for the thoughtful post Tom. We have the I/O module... but we had to crank the gain in-camera all the way up to get usable levels... and the noise floor was just - gross, for lack of better terms... and that was with both the Zoom h6 onboard mics and an XLR mic plugged into the zoom.

Might I have a bad preamp in the camera? Is this a problem people have had?
 
something is wrong, you should not have to crank the gain all the way up. although hardware failure is an easy thing to blame, my gut tells me there is something wrong in the setup - bad or wrong cable or incorrect setting somewhere. which I/O module specifically do you have?
 
I've had no problems running a Sony lavalier setup going in through the 1/4"... are you specifically looking for a boom setup?
 
I have to crank the gain to max just to use the cameras scratch mics to sync external audio records as well. It's just not usable at the default levels... And is not really an acceptable quality regardless of the cameras audio settings... Which are pretty basic as you know.

I'm starting to think more and more that I've got a hardware issue.
 
Neither, more of an on-camera ENG style nat-mic solution.
 
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