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Going from Mackie 1203 vlz3 to Canon XF 305
I’m new to the forum although I have frequented it for most of my professional career. I worked in the television industry for five years as an audio mixer (though never really doing any heavy setup other than to assist the chief audio engineer) and videographer/editor before moving to a small production-type company.
My question is regarding a noisy feed out of the Mackie 1203 VLZ mixer to the CANON XF305 camera. After examining the Mackie manual I see that it is primarily for music recording and may not be optimal for use with camera. I know this isn’t an ideal situation but I have to mix a five-person interview and there’s no way to do that well without using the only mixer available.
Again referring to the manual, it sends an XLR line out to an amplifier. Is that the missing piece? When I have time I’ll try it out, but just wanted to post to see if anyone else has had a similar set up.
Also important things: I’m feeding 2 G3 Senheisser wireless and 3 hard-wired mics into the mixer via XLR. I’m still not 100% sure about the phantom power since the board is all channels or none for phantom power. Would the G3s be fine in regards to phantom power? Monitoring the feed from the board is clean but into the camera there is static.
Any suggestions about the line feed to the camera or the phantom power issue are welcomed warmly.
Post script: the more I write, the more I think it is an amp issue. I can’t recall seeing what level line feed there was but it probably is too low.
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6 Replies
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What exactly does “noisy feed” mean here? There are a dozen different kinds of “noise” and the diagnosis can be quite different for different kinds of noise.
Do you hear noise in the mixer (as from the headphone output) separately (before you connect the camera)? Effective audio path troubleshooting and diagnosis attacks the problem step-by-step. One microphone at a time, etc.
There is nothing about the Mackie 1203 VLZ3 that makes it any more (or less) “optimal” for music recording vs. using it with a camera. You should be able to connect the XLR outputs from the Mackie mixer into the Canon camera XLR inputs at either mic-level or line level. Of course you must match the levels at each end. If you use the line-level inputs to the camera, then you must set the mixer ouputs to line-level. And same for mic-level. (set for mic-level at each end).
The Sennheiser wireless receivers should not care whether the phantom power is turned on or not. We don’t know what “3 hard-wired mics” you are talking about? Presumable one or more are condenser mics if you are asking about phantom power.
Do you have the same “noise” when the camera is operating from battery power and not connected to mains power? Ground-loop (or other grounding problem) is one source of some types of “noise”. But without better details of exactly how things are connected and other details, we really can’t offer any more specific suggestions.
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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder. -
Hello, Richard, and thank you for your response.
I apologize for not being clear, I unintentionally left out in the original post that everything sounds fine from the mixer’s phones. When the feed gets to the camera, however, is where what I called “noise” but more specifically is interference begins.
I mentioned that the mixer seems more for music and PA work because the XLR main outs are for “powered or amplified speakers” which may be part of the problem.
The camera is on battery power so I was thinking of plugging it into another outlet that the mixer is not drawing power from.
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We can’t really get any farther without knowing exactly what you mean by “noise”. Can you post a sample clip somewhere where we can hear it? We need to hear the normal audio along with the noise so that we can hear the proper dynamic reference.
The output of the mixer is “for” whatever you want to use it for. SOME people use mixers like that for “powered or amplified speakers”, but many others have never used them like that. It really makes no difference at all.
You can try it, but plugging the camera power into utility mains power won’t reduce this “noise”, and quite possibly can make it worse. But only YOU can do the experiment with YOUR gear.
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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder. -
I tried the setup again earlier and the interference I was getting appears to be gone. I’m not exactly sure how since I used the same exact setup as before (XLR main out from the board to camera line-level input) but the audio is clean both out of the mixer and also the camera. I also switched the camera from battery to ac power and that resulted in no difference in quality.
I consider the issue resolved for reasons I’m not totally certain. Most likely it was just lack of my familiarity with this sound mixer.
Thank you for the advice, Richard.
Best,
Brandon -
Hi guys. I had a Canon xf305 for a number of years. Perhaps I’m not totally understanding your setup.
If your mixer is getting a series of mic feeds, and you want to send those to the XF305 XLR in’s, then set the in’s to LINE IN not Mic. Maybe you had the setting set wrong. Your noise might have been that. It also could have been caused by long runs of not grounded cable, a short in an input plug, etc. Glad it’s gone though.
Al
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Hello Al,
Thank you for the suggestion. I did have original input to the camera set to line, I think the issue must have been power related or something. I will follow up on this thread if it gives me an issue again. I was just wondering if it was just me (I was confident all the settings were correct) or if anyone else had a similar issues with using either the same mixer or camera.
Cheers,
Brandon
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