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Canon 60D Low Sound Issue All Mics
Hello everyone,
I’ve been a big fan of COW for a long time, so now that I’m experiencing a pretty bad technical issue it was the first place I thought of that real experts might be able to help me. Thank you in advance for your time.
I have a big problem with my Canon 60D – the sound recordings are absolutely awful. The camera relies heavily on digital gain, which introduces a constant ‘hiss’. I have tried with and without the hack ‘Magic Lantern’ (https://www.magiclantern.fm) with no difference (thus eliminating the hack as the culprit), so I am using Magic Lantern to try and get to the bottom of the problem as I can manually adjust analogue and digital gain with it enabled.
Now, before people jump on my back and start hitting me on the head with a monopod, repeating over and over ‘it’s the AGC’, ‘all DSLR’s on-board sound is awful – record externally’ etc, may I direct you to this video by the wonderful Dave Dugdale –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njz9614PX9k
It’s exactly 3 years old at time of writing, ML was in very early stages of development yet using an external mic with 0db of digital gain, the sound is clean and very useable. He puts the analogue gain up, takes off the digital gain and, well, that’s it. Great sound.
I’ve made a short video to demonstrate the problem, emulating Dave’s settings for direct comparison –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGHUH1kGIX0
I ramble on, especially at the start, but to a layman like me it seems that the power to the mic is too low (yes, I have mic power ‘on’ in ML and of course the problem is the same with or without ML anyway), which is why I have to massively boost digital gain for you to even be able to hear me. I then speak with the same settings as Dave in his video, with both the on-board and an external mic. I’ve added subtitles so you have a clue what I’m saying – if you turn volume up and are using headphones at this point, there is a warning to turn volume down again.
For me, this clearly isn’t just a case of ‘bad DSLR sound capability’ and is a problem that keeps cropping up on the ‘net. However, posters get confused responses from people trying to help that suspect their idea of bad sound isn’t actually that bad, or that it’s the age-old AGC on the Canon rearing it’s head. I think it would be helpful for everyone to have a definitive thread that finally nails this problem for future reference.
If I had to guess at a solution, I’d suggest that there’s a firmware issue in there somewhere – I personally think the camera isn’t powering the internal mic sufficiently (in fact hardly at all). But I’m no sound engineer or firmware programming genius and don’t have a clue how to solve this problem. Which is why I’m asking you lovely people!
Once again, thank you all in advance for any help or advice you can offer.
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4 Replies
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One week later and no suggestions so far, I’m going to expand the search to the Magic Lantern and Canon forums.
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Two months later and I’ve had one reply on YouTube from someone with basically the same problem. Looks like this has everyone stumped :-/
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Hi Brett,
so far I can’t find any “mistakes” you could have done (wich is probably the reason why noone answers in this forum) so I have the feeling that your hardware -ergo your 60D- might not work 100% propperly…. did Canon or some Camera-Electrics-Crack test it sometime ? I hope I am wrong but with my 60D I have no sound issues – no matter if I use intern/ extern or “normal”/ML- Sound. I recorded a classic music concert in quite good quality (not even using ML by that time) and since some months I use a Rhode Video Mic and get much better results (also recording with a Tascam DR-40 if the sound needs to be much better then average).
Sorry I couldn’t really help but maybe you let Canon check your camera since this is quite some issue.
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Thank you Wolf, I suspect you are right as well. I’m going to get another camera so I have a spare anyway, then this can get sent to Canon for a service / check. There is a possibility it was an ML problem but I honestly have no way of knowing.
Thanks again for the input, good to know that’s not the ‘standard’ sound!!
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