Looking for inexpensive mixer - from Mic to mixer to Camera

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by David Delaney

What does a Pre-mixer do exactly?

I think you're thinking of the Mix-Pre which is the name of a particular two-channel stereo mixer made by Sound Devices. It's a preamplifier, which means it will take a mic level signal and raise it to line level to be sent on to the camera; and a mixer, which allows you to route either or both of its two inputs to either or both of its two outputs in this case. It also provides for headphone monitoring by the sound op, phantom power, and filters/limiters to help control levels, low frequency rumble, and such.

[Ty Ford]

A Sound Devices MixPre is a high quality 2 channel mixer with line outputs.

A Pre-mixer is someone who or something that mixes audio before a subsequent stage of work.

Regards,

Ty Ford

[Ted OMalley]

I just purchased and am testing a pair of the ART Studio V3's. Very inexpensive, warm vocal output with limiting. I set the "top end" for vocal output from the V3 and adjust my camera input level between -3 and 0. Then, even if the "talent" screams into the mic, though you can tell they are screaming, it never over drives the system. There is no distortion when this is happening by the way, it sounds more like some very attentive audio engineer is adjusting levels in perfect step.

The sound is clean and stays clean - plus you have the option of adjusting the equalization to match a variety of presets. This covers a range of vocals as well as instrumentation.

If interested, here's a link:
http://www.zzounds.com/item--ARTV3

[Sam Rosado]

I have seen a few posts about mixing mic signals for cams and being that I have just closed my recording studio of 15 years to go to video, I will take a shot.......

I use a small mackie mixer(cr series) for micing a room. However, I do not record to the cam tape but to my laptop(mac) with dp5.1. I do this when I need clean audio as I can now record several tracks independently and mix down to stereo after I have mastered the audio. DP5 allows me to import mov file and sync seamlessy with the video giving me a great sound. I might suck at filming as I am still a bit green but my sound is fantastic. Sometimes I use my portable flash recorder or 4 trak, depending on the shoot. When I mic a room scene, I use pzm at the boundries and use a sep mic for the actual conversation to give the sound an ambience feel.

hope this helps