Audio question

[Heath McKnight]

I did a search but couldn't find this answer:

Can you get nat sound off the XL-1s microphone on one channel, and still get another channel of sound via an interview mic plugged in through an XLR adaptor? This is something we can do on DVCPro at my TV news station.

Thanks,

heath

[Chris Hurd]

Hello Heath,

Keep in mind that the included onboard mic is stereo, so audio from that mic will always be *two* channels, not one. Set the XL1 or XL1S to record 12-bit audio, and you now have four channels (that is, two stereo pairs) to work with. You can assign the onboard mic as one stereo pair, and up to two additional XLR sources, such as a handheld mic and/or wireless lav, to the other stereo pair (two more channels). Even though it's 12-bit audio, you're still recording CD quality sound.

What you were probably doing at the news station is recording two channels of audio, with one being a mono mic onboard the camera, and the other being a handheld (or "interview") XLR mic. You can do the exact same thing with the XL1 / XL1S in 16-bit mode, by removing the included stereo mic and replacing it with a standard mono XLR mic. Cable it to an XLR adapter and plug a handheld mic into the other XLR channel. Now you have the same set-up as the News station, with 16-bit DAT-quality sound.

XL1 / XL1S audio is fairly versatile as long as you understand the onboard switches and internal menu settings. See the following XL1 Watchdog articles: Two-Channel Recording Set-up and Four-Channel Recording Set-up for more info. Hope this helps,

[Heath McKnight]

Thanks, chris. They also found a way around it here at my station: pull of the camera mic and put another interview-style mic in and plug it into the second XLR input.

heath

[Rob Lohman]

Keep in mind that when you switch to four channel recording your
not only switching to 12 bits but also 32 kHz.