2 audio channels?
 

Hey, had a quick question that has to be answered quickly. Can I have two XLR channels simultanous? What settings do I have to change? I would check the manual, but I'm at work and I have to be ready to setup it up right after work. Can anyone help?

The short answer is, usually, sure. But to properly answer your question you needs to provide a lot more information about your audio hardware, camera, etc, the whole ball of wax. What are you working with and what do you need to accomplish?

Well, here is my setup. I'm gonna be shooting a news style package, so I'm gonna have a shotgun mic and a handheld mic, both plugged directly into the camera. I'm gonna use the shotgun of nats and the handheld for interviews and reporter sound.

Again, not enough information. We have no idea what camera you're using.

Sorry, I'm used to posting in a different board. I'm using a Canon XH-A1.

You can record separate audio to each channel in the camera. You can also mix them in the camera, so you need to check to make sure you are assigning each input to a separate audio channel, if that is your intent.

Mix in camera, how? XH-A1 that is.

I know you can either feed ch1 to both ch1 and ch2, or ch1 to 1 and ch2 to 2 and that's it (and should be that way).

One possible problem with shotgun and handheld is that it is not possible to assign phantom power to only one channel. If the handheld is a dynamic omni ENG mic it needs no phantom. It might be able to take it, though, without problems.

I was just about to query this too.

Not so. Each XLR input has a separate phantom power switch.

Probably a poor choice of words on my part. You said what I meant. If you want two separate signals to play with on your audio timeline in post, then you assign mic1 (say, a lav) to ch 1 and mic2 (say, a hypercardiod) to ch 2. But if you assign each mic to BOTH ch1 AND ch2, you have effectively "mixed" the signals in your camera and you have no options to speak of in post. Eg. if the hyper picked up some room echo, you cannot just simply revert to the track using only the lav.

Sorry for any confusion.

Cool, thanks for the info. I'm good to go.

And to add, you'll probably end up with really screwed up audio. Never, ever, mix boom and lav together - always keep them on separate tracks. Because their distances from the speaker's mouth are very different, the arrival time differences of the sound at the two mics will usually cause them to mix very unpleasantly with all sorts of phase artifacts.

In XH-A1 you can not assign both channels to both channels. It is either ch1 to both, or ch1 to 1 and ch2 to 2. Thus, mixing is not possible.