[John Rogers]

Hi. OP here with some answers to my own questions. figured i’d post what I found for others in same situation, or for correction by the community:

bars and tone. go ahead and record a few seconds of each on your card. may come in handy for diagnosing problems later. not critical, but can’t hurt. i’m going to use smpte bars and -12db tone.

i’ve experimented a lot now and can say nothing beats the auto setting on my canon xf100 for sound. i’m using a wired lav and a wireless lav. both in thru xlr. one needs phantom the other doesn’t. for basic voice recording this gave me a level around -12db. That seems to be a good level for the original recording. It jumps up to -10 occasionally with regular levels of voice.

The auto sound setting put levels above the recommended -18db stated in the manual but it all came out fine with strong level and lots of room on top for anything unexpected. Played with limiter, compressor etc in fcpx and each was able to use the signal I had just fine and give lots of room to play ion the mix.

learned that loudness setting isn’t necessary if you learn to use audio compressor and set custom settings for your liking. limiter important.

have set my Imac speaker at exactly half way up.

OK, that’s what i’ve got so far. any comments?

thanx.
jr

[John Rogers]

Great info. Thanks. Have been trying to figure this out myself. So, that still the recommended procedure?

Do you use the limiter as well? Which do you do first? Does it matter?

Thanks for sharing.