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New Rode VideMic Pro recording at lower-than-normal levels?
I recently bought the Rode VideoMic Pro to couple with my Zoom H1 in order to obtain better and cleaner sound in my videos by recording the person’s voice from up top, as close as I can get to the mouth, which is normally around 30-40 cm. However, I’m finding that at normal to slighlty-higher-than-normal speech levels my setup must be VMP @ +20db and H1 @ 25 in order to get a decent sounding audio quality with decent volume. And I’m often having to ask the speaker to speak a louder, as loud as he/she can, which is not ideal.
It seems a little weird that I have to jack the VMP all the way up to get decent levels. If I want the VMP @ 0 db, say, in order not to capture everything that’s going on around, I find I’m forced to jack up the H1 all the way up to 75 in order to get similar results. Although here I feel audio quality is already a little sacrificed by jacking up the gain so much.
The VMP @ -10 db? Well, that makes sound non-existent in my setup. My setup is pretty standard, isn’t it? Having the VMP at 30 cm seems like a dream to me when compared to when I worked on short films and the boom had to be high up, a meter or more from the actors. However, I feel I’m getting very low recording volumes. Not at all what I was expecting when I spent more than 200€ on the mic.
The first VMP I bought had an issue with the 3,5 audio jack, and the audio input to the H1 would cut off on its own for no reason. So I could never really test it. I exchanged it and this second VMP is fine in that respect but it does have an issue with the Off-On-Cut switch popping off when I take it out of the bag or when I toggle it. So I’m feeling like the Rode quality control for these mics atleast isn’t that great. This, added to the fact that I feel that, even though the VMP is a shtogun mic, I find it picks up a lot more from all over the place than I was expecting for its price. Allinall, I’m wondering if I haven’t got another lemon on my hands? That my VMP might actually be working at lower-than-normal volumes and I should change it again?
I would really appreciate to know your experience with the VMP and if you think this sounds normal or if it sounds like the mic isn’t working correctly.
Thanks in advance for your input! Cheers!
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2 Replies
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Hi – I dont have any of this kit, but:-
Do you have a new battery in the mic? Lithium or Alkaline?
You have NO other cables between the Rode and the H1
PeterPost Production Dubbing Mixer
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Hi, Peter,
It has a new battery and no cables between the mic and the H1.
I’m not saying that there’s surely an issue… my expectations for this mic may be higher than they ought to be. But I would like to discard there being an issue; especially with my not-so-good experience with the first VMP.
Cheers!
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