Couple of novice wireless mic questions

[Ty Ford]

Hello April and Welcome to the Cow Audio Forum,

[April Hill] “I just got my first wireless mic system and have a couple of novice questions. My camera is a Pansonic DVX100 and the mic system is a Sony UWPC1, https://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/product-UWPC1%2F6264/.

Question #1
After reading through my manuals, I am still uncertain about channels, frequencies, and attenuation levels, with so many options. In doing some test recordings, I just set the channels on both the transmitter and tuner to the first choice – how do you figure out what the best channel is (same for frequencies and attenuation levels)? Any online resources people recommend to beef up on audio knowledge?

Choose a frequency that doesn’t have interference. Both xmitter and receiver (not tuner) need to be on the same frequency. Attenuation levels (or no attenuation) are choices made under the subject of gain staging. At its simplest, you want the input of the transmitter to be loud enough to modulate the transmitter well. If it’s too sensitive, when someone speaks loudly, the transmitter will distort. Too low and the voice will be in the noise floor.

The output of the receiver needs to be gain staged properly with the camera input. At its simplest, you want to have the output of the receiver match the input of the camera. Line out to line in, for example. Or mic level out to mic level in.

Mixers usually have a tone generator that is used to send a tome from the mixer to the camera. On the DVX 100, you send tone at 0 on the mixer and adjust the camera inputs to -20. That gives you a usable dynamic range from 0 to +20 on the mixer without distorting the camera input.

You then connect the receiver output to one of the mixer inputs and gain stage the two so the receiver output won’t over drive the mixer input.

Question #2
My recordings were mono. Is that normal/ok/the only choice I have? Is this something you make stereo in editing (I use FCP HD)? Or do you just use a mono track?

Thanks so much for your time with these non-audio professional inquiries! And if there’s other info you need about what I’m using, let me know. “

A mono mic can only record in mono. You can probably switch the DVX 100 inputs so that the mic goes to both tracks. Then it would be dual mono.

If you want stereo, you need a stereo mic or two mono mics.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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[Saya Hillman]

Thanks Ty. Always helpful.

Follow up question –
Is a mono recording ok, soundwise? Silly question I guess, but I’m not sure how different video recorded in mono will sound from video recorded in stereo. If you mono-recorded would you just use the audio as is, or are there things you’d do in FCP to sweeten the audio so to speak?

[Ty Ford]

Thanks April,

Sure, in FCP you can pan a mono signal to center. You can also record a single source to both tracks and just leave it at that. Bring it in as a stereo track, but as long as the sound is equal on each channel, it’ll play as mono.

Some folks like to set record levels of a single voice so one channel is a little below the other just in case the person shouts. If the first track distorts, hopefully the lower one won’t.

Regards,

Ty Ford

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