BigBeaner wrote:Are xlr's really that much better or should I just get what I can for now and a field mixer or hold off for the best?
It's not that XLR connectors are better than miniplugs (although they are sturdier, which is important in the reliability of field gear), but that low impedance microphones are the standard in professional audio. It's designed to work with the commonly found gear that audio guys like flatwood and myself use. You can pass a perfectly good signal down an unbalanced line, but for reasons we won't delve into here (phantom powering, transformer isolation, common mode signal rejection & etc) field and studio professional audio techs prefer low impedance balanced line signals.
If you want to know about the nuts & bolts of pro audio, there are plenty of similar forums & newsgroups on the WWW dedicated to that.
BigBeaner wrote:My plan was get an XLR and buy a mini plug adapter that way if/when I upgrade, I still have a mic.
That's exactly what I do when I shoot and record audio with my Panasonic DVC30 mini DV cam. I bought a female XLR to stereo miniplug from B&H mailorder for around ten bucks and it works fine albeit fragile.
If you want to get fancier and "more correct", you can buy stepup-transformer based adapter boxes or true microphone preamps with XLR inputs and 1/8" miniplug outputs. You bolt one to the stand adapter of your camcorder, they start at about $150.
Yes, thats an even better and more "correct" solution. I was trying to keep my posts within the parameters of his original $100 premise. We both know how hard it is to get good audio on the cheep but its possible with some knowledge and a little time.
So, I just sold an old Valley People "bump box" on ebay for cheep. Runs on 12vdc and bumps two mics from high to low and vice versa. I think it went for under $50 I think. It would have been easily adaptable to this type of work.
BigBeaner wrote:Ya, I've been looking at to get one of those too, they are essentially like field mixers too, right? I assume that's what this mean.
Premium quality trim controls for adjusting signal levels, full noise shielding, rugged compact metal case
Afraid not. A field mixer is a more sophisticated device; a typical one provides 3 phantom powered mic or line level inputs, each of which can be panned to a 2-channel output, low-cut filters for reducing windborne and pop noise, and it provides headphone monitoring and signal level monitoring with meters or LED's. You'll pay significantly more for a field mixer.
Nobody's bidding because T-powered mics are not compatible with modern phantom powered systems. But if you can handle a DYI power supply here's a chance for top end audio capture.
During the recording of the new album, I understand there was a very specific microphone you wanted to use.
Angela: Yeah, a good old German one. I wanted to use a hand-held microphone this time. The normal ones you use live, they distort too much, like the SM58. It's a great live microphone but way too much distortion so you can't record with that. Our producer, he knows a lot about this kind of equipment and he said Sennheiser microphones, they have a couple of really good ones that they record like radio sessions with. They interview a person against a really noisy background and it still picks up that person's voice very clearly. So he went out to find one of these, the Sennheiser MD-21, and there's just a few left because I think they are form the '60s or '70s, really old. He actually found one, we tried it out and it sounded great.
