pre-amp or no pre-amp. that is the question

[Jason Jenkins]

[Jon Hwan] “what are some cheap pre-amps available?”

You don’t get around the cheap camera preamps by routing your audio through a cheap external preamp. You get a good preamp. Check out the Juicedlink stuff.

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

Check out my Mormon.org profile.

[Chris Wright]

would it bother you to sync external sound up? zoom h1n is less than $99

[Mike Smith]

Does your mic need a preamp at all …?

[Jon Hwan]

I’ll be needing a shotgun mic.

[Jon Hwan]

Does a rode VideoMic with Rycote Lyre need it?

[Mike Smith]

You could try asking more on the pro audio forum https://forums.creativecow.net/audioprofessionals

[Rob Manning]

Best practice, use dual sourced audio. The cost of a preamp without a discrete DAR is cart before the horse.

The shoot, unless you (if) have a dedicated sound person, will be easier to manage in post but, solo? Be aware.

Is there a direct feed if it is a venue and does the board operator appreciate having one more set of meters to monitor?

Can you set up a decent shotgun out of frame on a boom for each speaker or actor?

Each take should have an audio test drive, slight head turning, moving across the frame (lavs) and so on….

Room echo, not isolated, the works, so a lot to consider and why? dual source or camera synch is industry practice everywhere.

The op amps on the newer Nikons and Canons are robust but on camera audio, even with a good mic is always going to have hurdles.

Here is a link to a jazz band concert done the first day out with a D800, the issue, static audio on camera, good but when walking across the room, easy to note the highs and lows differ. A board feed would have been more even but this was a donated shoot (fund raiser) so we got what we got. https://www.rainbowind-photoart.com/Professional/Reels/28095369_wn4dhL#!i=2490828623&k=WPrFPdC

The audio defaults to 100%, server, so hit the volume at 50%. There are a couple of other rough ‘live’ edits as well, from the D7000.

None of this footage is dual sourced because it was done without an expectation of commercial release.

We shot a four camera set up of a concert that went to DVD, that was synched through PluralEyes (now Red Giant) with the 48 track Pro Tools master, but even then, I went to my mastering engineer because the recordist ran 44.1 and we remixed the stereo master at 48k.

HTHs

Rob Manning

[Kevin Duffey]

Like others said, a juicelink or something would be good before feeding in to the camera. If you can, something like the Tascom DR-40/60, H4n/H6 would be good, because it’s external audio and much better preamps. Even better is they all have a line out on them that you can feed to the camera input. This makes it very easy to sync the audio in post while still getting audio with the video.

[Jeff Beaumont]

Every test I have seen, including tests on recent models like the D800 and 5D mkIII show that the internal audio is not even close to the quality of the cheapest Zoom or Tascam. This is sad but true. Low frequency roll off, unacceptable distortion levels low bit rate and lossey codecs.
It’s very telling that no DSLR manufacture publishes real specs on their audio. They don’t even admit which codec they use or how much They want it to remain a mystery.
If you care about sound quality then you need to shoot double system and record 48khz 24 bit.In camera audio on DSLR is “good enough” for some things, but not for everything.

Jeff Beaumont

Words, Images, Sound
jeff-beaumont.com