my jvc hd200 sounds awful
 

i'm recording events (especially weddings) with my hd200 and i recently shot a short film. I used the onboard mic and also bought another XLR one (audio technica ATM33) to use with and noticed that the JVC is really awful recording sounds... i get very high noise and there's nothing to record and so on.

My old Minidisc recorder seems to be far far better.

Am i doing something wrong ? or it's just that bad ?

I've never had a problem recording good audio on my HD200. Unless your camera has a fault, these cameras do a fine job of recording audio.

forgot to mention that i'm using it with a redrock adapter in front and a DRHD100 hard drive on one side...
May be my "noise" are coming from there...

Eric,

Have you also checked the little fan at the rear bottom of the HD200? (below the battery mount.) It is possible your fan needs replacing if it is whining. The DR-HD100 also has a small fan on the bottom.

If the vibrations are passing to your mic through the mount try wrapping the microphone in a strip of 1/4" of foam and then put it back in the rubber mount. The added bit of foam may absorb some vibration.

yeah ! you are right Tim, it's really a fan and motor sound problem: i took everything off and it's better now. But still get some "ssssss" on the background... don't know what to do with the fan at the rear bottom except replacing it (cost $$$ ?)

Could you be more specific about why it sounds awful?

Are you getting clean sound but are dissatisfied with the quality? Alternatively, are you getting some kind of interference or noise on the signal?

For a start a number of threads have mentioned that you should just ditch the onboard mic as it is a joke.

Rob

hi Rob,

sorry i missed your question.
That's the problem: i'm not getting clean sound, i've to raise the audio gain very high so i also get a lot of noise. I've already bought another mic : Audio technika atm33a wich is a very good mic but the problem is the same: i've to boost the volume and noise is coming onboard. So i've to use a denoiser plugin heavily on post.
I don't think it's the good way.

Hi Eric,

Assuming that you have the inputs set to mic level, If you have to boost gain so high it sounds like there is a problem with your mic preamps. Generally, the mic preamps (though not very good on the camera) certainly do not require a lot of gain.

Have your tried going line level in via a good quality mixer or external pre? It would be interesting to know whether the noise is still present.

Rob

I picked up a Rhode shoe mounted mic holder. It eliminates nearly all vibration noise caused by fingers, zooms, fans and DTE drives. The stock rubber mount is narrow and also doesn't isolate vibration well. Again, better than nothing, best to remove the stock mic and leave the stock mic mount empty.

1. JVC stock mic is for looks only. Place it on your desk at work and play with it when you are on the phone or give it to somebody you hate. Well it's not really that bad... I mean it's still better than nothing.

2. I assume your Audio Technica is a Phantom? So power up the XLR port to match.

3. I cheat with Audio. I have a decent entry level Sennheiser K66 shotgun that most engineers say it's an OK starter mic. I plug it into my JVC XLR Phantom powered by the JVC. I run Mic 2 duping Mic 1. Mic 1 I have on auto and Mic 2 where i ride the levels. The auto OK and better than nothing if I lose track of the audio while shooting the footage. So that way i I totally screw up the manual audio, I might have something decent in the auto audio to pull from for that 10 seconds or so.

hi Rob,

i don't have any other external preamp so i could'nt check it that way.
I also tried "autolevel" on both left and right: JVC and AudioTechnica on XLR set to mic, but i can't see the difference between them ! they are both noisy !

As Tim said, the fan at the rear bottom is starting to make noise as i power on the jvc...