Where do get a good deal on a cheaper Wireless mic and how do they work?
 

Ok Im a newbie to this part, I have 3 GL1s and dont have anything for wireless mics, how do you go about doing this and where does the sound go to? Can you put mulitiple wireless mics to 1 camera?

Hiya:

The general consensus is that wireless microphone systems that cost under about U.S. $500.00 are better as paperweights than as wireless systems.

The Sennheiser G2 systems and the Audio-Technica 1800 series are generally regarded as decent quality systems with okay performance in most circumstances. Both begin at around $500.00 to $600.00.

You can run two separate wireless mic systems into your camera although does the GL-1 have XLR connections? If not, you will also need to purchase some sort of Canon or Beachtek adapter so that your camera can accept balanced inputs.

Good luck,

Dan

I'm still interested in an answer to this question if anyone has one. I too need a cheap wireless mic. I've got a sennheiser g2 system but I don't really want to put the transmitter on my so during a lacrosse game. I wouldn't be too heartbroken if a ball or stick smashed a $100 receiver though. In this case, I don't really care about quality as much as cost savings for something I consider sacrificial.

http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/wl...5aa/index.html


Perfect for your application..

Ty Ford

Ty, that link took me to audio technicas home page?

that's weird it took me to their page (again) describing the 700 series wireless mic system

Try it again and if you still get ONLY the homepage search for the 700 series.

Ty Ford

ok thats weird, your link worked that time.
maybe its just my hallucinations again?

Ah, then the Kool Aid IS working?

Regards,

Ty Ford

I think this has come up before. It seems that for the Audio-Technica website links to work, it's necessary to have chosen a country, and thus a cookie having been set on your computer. After this is done, the link should work.

Or there could be another issue entirely.

There are some bargains if one looks hard enough. I purchased a used Telex ENG100 on ebay for $149.00 about a month ago. UHF 100 channel diversity outfit. Sound quality is good enough for speeach but when used to record music concert a little dissappointed about the compression, expansion artifacting. I don't recall this with an older Sennheiser EW100 outfit I had but the distance on this Telex is better than the Sennheiser since it's diversity. This was originally a $1k msrp unit.

Have a look here Tony.
http://www.samsontech.com/products/p...=141&brandID=1

I have one of these and it's about half the price of the G2 Sennheiser. It works faultlessly for me here in the UK, but there's no channel choices.

tom.

Tom good find!
Sam ash has them for 399.99 I might go pick one up.
http://www.samash.com/catalog/showit...RCH&GroupCode=

Also found a video on youtube, it sounds pretty good. NWS for gangster language from our Sprint Store Employee!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=2icsScwFOAI

It's just that $400 seems a lot for two tiny boxes, when for $100 more you get a 'proper' Sennheiser G2 system.

Samson and Azden; not names known for rugged reliability.

Regards,

Ty Ford

Also, consider why turning yourself into a radio station is the best approach to this.

In the space of a wireless transmitter, you could easily just affix a small digital recorder to the player in question.

Sync the sound in post.

Voila - you've just saved the cost of transmitting and receiving circuits between the mic and the recorder - AND all the problems associated with audio via RF.

Worth considering.

Bill's got a point, and Minidisc recorders do have their advantages (and disadvantages of course).

Tony, I'm not saying the Samson is bad, just that for a few dollars more you get a lot more by going Sennheiser or Sony.

Bill, can you elaborate more on "the problems associated with audio via Rf" with the Sennheier wireless mic systems ? I was planning on finally getting the sennheiser wireless mic system and would appreciate any info, or potential problems in advance. I really don't know much about these systems and have read about the iriver units and have gotten one along with the giant squid mic. I have yet to try to use the audio from the iriver in edit and have heard that syncing the audio from the irivers and your cameras audio/footage, requires some "tricks" with stretching the audio in post to get it synced. Any info would be much appreciated.

There's an old sound mixer's adage "Always use a cable whenever you are able." Radio links are always potentially subject to interference, dropouts, multipath distortion, etc, problems that hard-wired mic are not. The Sennheiser G2's are good enough to be considered entry-level professional quality but many of the differences between a G2 setup at ~$600 and a Lectro or Zaxcom setup at $3000 to $4500 is the relative immunity from such problems with the higher priced units. But a $50 XLR cable is even more immune to such problems than even the top of the line wireless rig would be. That's not to say you shouldn't get the Sennheiser setup, just be realistic about your expectations for ANY wireless.

The problem with sync using consumer recorders like the iRiver lies in the stability of the sample clocks. If the clock in the camera and the clock in the recorder are running at slightly different rates, when you line up a 'frame' of audio to its matching picture in post at the start of the shot you'll find that over time as the shot progresses the two will drift apart. Audio that was initially recorded over exactly 5 minutes will play back in 5 minutes plus or minus some fraction when transferred into your editing workstation. Alas, rock-solid stable and accurate clocks require careful engineering, high quality components, careful assembly, and vigilant quality control and all that costs money. It's just not something the manufacturer of a product designed for consumer entertainment and selling for ~$100 can afford to do.

There aren't really any tricks to get things synced in post. Use editing software that lets you stretch the audio track to make it longer or shorter without shifting its pitch. When shooting use a slate or something like a handclap to mark a point near the start of the scene and another near the end. In post, after importing both the audio and video files, place them on the editing timeline. Slide the audio back and forth until the sound of the slate or clap in the audio at the start of the shot matches the frame showing the clap in the video. Scroll to the end of the shot and see if the 'tail slate' frames match. If they do, fine. If not, figure out by what percentage the audio running time needs to be expanded or compressed to bring them into alignment.

As Steve says, clock accuracy is not cheap -- and of course it may not be the external audio recorder's clock that's at fault.
It could be spot on, but if the camera clock is slightly adrift, you've still got a problem. And as the camera track is the one already synced to the video, it's still the external recording that has to be changed, even though it's recorded at the right speed!

I reckon you can do quite well for external audio recording quite reasonably.

The Olympus WS200S, and it's successor the WS210S, can give quite good results for less than $100. Not 'top draw',but better than you might imagine for a cheap dictation recorder. And tiny, so easy to hide.

I did a mic comparison here:
http://www.simplydv.co.uk/simplyBB/v...&sd=a&start=15
a while back (second post from bottom of page) which included a WS200S recording. Sorry about the voice, but it is a genuine un-modified simultaneous recording, just to give an idea of the quality you might expect for $100.

Incidentally, the external lav mic used with the WS200S was a $5 Panasonic WM 61A capsule.

Funnily enough my Sony and Sharp Minidisc recorders hold absolute sync with my Z1 over the hour a tape runs, so I assumed (wrongly, it turns out) that digital audio recorders simply ran in sync because they almost 'had to'.

So I was very disappointed to find how far my Zoom H2 (nice recorder that it is) drifts in the hour. Recording MP3 it's a good 12 frames out.

http://www.samsontech.com/products/p...fm?prodID=1916

tom.

Tom,

At least now you know what works! (and what doesn't).

Regards,

Ty Ford

Thanks to all for the info, much appreciated.

Tom, are you saying that the Sony minidisc recorder, obtains audio over the cousre of an hour, that synced flawlessly with you Sony video recorders audio? But, that the H2's audio was out of sync? Sorry for the dumb question, but, I wanted to make sure that there are recording devices that will record synced audio without the need for editing in post. I have a pd170 and was hoping to find a portable recording device to work in outdoor situations that will work with lav mics to get the audio I need and avoid the "wireless" mic pitfalls and expense.

That's exactly what I'm saying Robert. My VX2000, FX1 and Z1 all sync beautifully with the Sharp and two Sony Minidisc recorders that I have. I've often run all of them for an hour at a time for stage shows etc, where Minidisc recorders can be dotted about the stage and plugged into the sound board.

The Zoom H2 is lovely because it's absolutely silent and it will easily run 35 hours onto a 2 gig card, but the loss of sync is a real disappointment. Of course many NLE setups will simply stretch or compress the audio to fit the pictures, though my Premiere 6.5 wouldn't do this. Just gone Edius 4.5 and don't know about this new NLE.

tom.

Tom... are any of these units portable for outdoor use on battery power?

I can't help thinking you've been very lucky Tom -- for the reason that Steve outlines above, there is no guarantee that any device, minidisc or otherwise, is going to stay in sync.
From my post above, my cheapo Olympus WS200S was hopelessly out of sync after only ten minutes - my Panasonic minidisc is much better. But it depends if I use my Canon or Panasonic camera. They're both slightly different in clock frequency, and so even my trusty old minidisc will not keep sync on a really long take - especially with my Canon camera.

The problem is that every combination is going to be different. Some folk are going to be lucky, like you have been, other perhaps not so lucky.
I think it would be useful to have the option to re-sync in post as a technique 'in the toolbox', as it were, if your particular combination of camera and recorder just happens to be one of the 'unlucky' ones.

Having said that, it would appear that some combinations are worse than others -- I've seen other posts on the net that suggest the Zoom H2 is perhaps more prone than some other devices to be 'adrift', clock frequency wise.

Roger...would it be safe to say that your panasonic mini recorders' clock is synced with your panasonic camera as opposed to your canon, and if so, then, can I draw the conclusion that the brand specific recorders will sync with their respective cameras...(Sony with Sony,Pana with Pana) ?

How small do you want a Minidisc recorder to be Robert? My Sony recorder is the size of three Minidiscs stacked on on top of the other. Far smaller than the H2, which is electric razor size. I'm happy to put the Minidisc into a groom's inside pocket, but he'd blanch at the sight and size of the Zoom H2.

So I've been lucky all these years and didn't know it Roger. I'd assumed that all camcorders ran in perfect sync, from old VHS to modern solid state. After all, they have to put 25 fps up onto a TV connected to our 50Hz mains, and if they didn't run exactly to speed the pictures would wobble.

tom.

Not a valid assumption at all. Picture would "wobble?" It would take a very practiced eye to see the difference between a picture shot at 25 FPS being played at 25FPS versus played at 24 FPS. The issue with sync in double system sound deals with sample clock accuracy, something that is a much more precise issue than mere frame rate. Audio is sampled for video at 48,000 samples per second. That means that in the time equal to a frame of NTSC video a soundtrack contains 1600 samples, 1 minute of a soundtrack contains 2,880,000 samples and 10 minutes would contain 28,800,000 samples. If the clock in the audio recorder and the clock in the camera differ by only 0.0055% you will have a 1 frame loss of sync in only 10 minutes and that will absolutely be noticable. In single system, where the sound and picture are recorded together in one device with sample clocks based on the same master clock, a slight difference from the nominal standard is of no consequence because the audio and video clocks are still together even if they're not right on what they should be. But in double system, if there's nothing to slave one to the other, even the slightest difference between the camera and audio recorder will eventually cause them to drift apart and loss of sync will jump up to bite you in the backside. Some combinations might drift out in 1 minute, some in 15 minutes, some might even hold it longer than that but eventually, it'll getcha.

Tom, The Sony portable minidisc you talked about sounds ideal, and if you could post a model # to refer to, I'd appreciate it. The information I've gotten so far on the sync issue has given me a better understanding of the possible probems I'm going to encounter and this at least will provide me with a good starting point. From some of these posts, it appears as if I can use post editing to make the audio acquired from the different recording sources, work using the stretching technique in edit. Having a sound that will "mark" the beginning of the recording seems to be an important requirement. Can audio between the camera and the secondary audio, simply be matched using the beginning of the dialogue at a low hushed level. For example, filming a nest of hummingbirds from 30 to 40 feet away, with someone mic'ed up a few yards from the hummingbirds, would require a hushed initial dialogue at best. Would this be enough to begin syncing the audio to the footage?

OK, my Sony Minidiscs are the MZ-G750 (single AA cell powered) and the MZ-R900 (internal Ni-mH cell). Both were brought second hand.

Syncing them up on the timeline is pretty easy as the waveform can be compared to bring them into rough alignment, then fine tuning is done to eliminate the echo denoting loss of sync. Any sharp noise (cough, snapping twig etc) is a great way to sync the start.

It sounds as if I will have to wish you luck, but sa I say, my Sonys and Panasonic camcorders have all synced beautifully together, and the Minidiscs have been no exception. That's why (after so many years of doing this) that I'm so dissapointed with the Zoom H2's (sync) performance. I assumed (correctly as it turned out) that recording on the H2 as wav files would improve matters over MP3, but then Minidisc is ATRAC compressed, so how do they manage it?

tom

Sony Minidisc model
 

Hello,
As a Sony minidisc user I had to chime in with the model that I use. Its a HI MD MZ-M100. It records uncompressed 44.1 16 kz files that can be dragged and dropped/converted to WAV files via USB. There is a newer model out called the MZ-M200 which I'm sure is just an improved model of this one. Its very small and has an internal rechargeable battery as well as a single AA battery add on. This gives you a very long record time. The one gig HIMD discs hold two hours of stereo uncompressed audio and cost about $ 7.00 each. I've used it with its included stereo mic to record chamber orchestra in a large hall, and I've fed it line in from the mix out of my Sound Devices 302 mixer as back up. Don't have any info on staying in sync since I've not used it for long passages. The down side with this device is if you use the mic, you should employ the extension cable to get it away from the transport noise. You can plug the mic directly into the unit but you may hear the transport that way. Price is around $300 new.
Bernie

Again, thanks to all for the info.

Robert--

First off, I use a Sony minidisc recorder with a giant squid myself sometimes, so I know whereof I speak.

Something else about minidisc recorders to keep in mind is that you can't monitor the audio while you're shooting. You may sit down to do some cutting and learn that your audio is way too hot and is clipping up a storm. Likewise, maybe the microphone is digging into your subject's chest hair for the entire three hours of your shoot, or maybe the mic has come unclipped from the subject's shirt, fallen, and has given you an excellent recording of the inside of his Fruit-o-the-Looms. You have no way of knowing if catastrophe has stricken until it's far too late. This is why a wireless is basically indispensable in situations where an XLR cable isn't possible or practical (like Steve was saying).

I've gone with the MD-recorder-and-Giant-Squid until I could afford the G2 wireless, which it appears I'll finally be able to get into my sweaty mitts very soon. Minidisc can be a somewhat passable, affordable workaround until you can get a halfway decent wireless system, but you have to be prepared to take a HUGE gamble on whether your audio will be usable or not. Every time I have to use the minidisc in this way, I get very nervous and curse the fact that I don't have a wireless. If I'm getting paid, I will not use this setup if the material being shot is essential to the project because if disaster strikes in a case like that, you're up sh*t creek--not without a paddle....without a boat. :)

To summarize: any wireless costing less than the G2 is almost certainly a waste of money, but a minidisc recorder with a Giant Squid (a setup that you can get your hands on for less than $100 if you buy used) can help you bridge the gap--but only if you're a gambling man.

P.S.: For what it is (a lav with a 3.5mm connector that requires 5v bias voltage), the Giant Squid omni lav is a surprisingly good mic. I recommend it without the least reservation if you absolutely have to go with a minidisc recorder. Darren is a great guy and makes good mics available for peanuts, and I love to support small businesses.

Jarrod speaks wise words but now he's scared me. I've been wiring up the groom with a Minidisc for years because the machine itself is so tiny and I can slip it into an inside pocket of his jacket. With a radio receiver (I have the Sennheiser and the Sony) I have to fumble about clipping it to his belt and this of course is in front of his arriving guests and when he's in a bit of a tizz anyway and generally I don't know the fellow.

I've not had a problem yet. Sync is maintained, the MD runs in the mono mode at full audio quality for well over 2 hours and it's so tiny he forgets it's there. But now I've been scared I think I'll leave the MD recorders on the pulpit lectern for the readers and near the choir for the singing.

You can never have too much audio backup I find.

tom.

Jarrod and Tom, I'll be receiving my new G2 today. I wasn't aware that these mics operate on 3 basic frequency groups. They are identfied by Sennheiser with either A B or C in their model number and each letter indicates a frequency range that that particular radio/mic and receiver will receve the signal on. Local radio and Television stations broadcast on these frequencies and you have to find a frequency that is (at the time) unaffected by these broasdcasting radio/TV stations, or you'll get interfernce from their broadcast. I believe it is dependent on distance from the broadcasting Station ( a 70 mile radius) and their particular broadcasting signal strength. I have been told that there is a frequency locater tool, that you can use to identify, which frequency is most usable in the area that you are from or plan to use it in. The "c" band has been purchased by verizon and another company ( which I cannot remember at this time), and is no longer available for use. I'm not sure if this means that you cannot receive a clear signal for use, or if just opens you up to legal issues if you are found tro be using their frequency? This brings the usable/available frequency groups down to 2. The A band is used heavily in my area and thereby makes the B band the better option for me. With the potential for the remaining bands to also be bought up by other companies, it makes me more than a little nervous about losing the ability to use my new toy in the not too distant future. ( if compnaies can buy these frequencies, as has happened with the C band, whats to stop the remaining available frequencies from also becoming unusable?) Hoping I haven't purchased soon to be obsolete. radio/mics. I'm also wondering, what affect wireless cell phone towers will have on these frequenies and this will be the first test for my new unit, because I have one just across the road from my home. I'll know more soon and if/ when possible, I'll try to post any problems or lack there of when possible.

Robert, your fears are justified. In fact, when TV broadcasters switch over to digital broadcast signals next year, the part of the radio spectrum the analog broadcasts (and things like wireless mics) currently occupy will also be sold off--probably to cell service providers like Verizon, etc.

I don't think anyone really knows yet what all of this will mean for those of us who use wireless mics, but a few things seem clear to me--maybe someone more fully informed can chime in and add to this or correct me if I'm wrong: the switchover probably doesn't mean that your wireless will stop working entirely, but it may (or may not) mean that it will be harder to find a usable channel. Yes, it will technically be illegal to use your wireless on these frequency bands, but I'll point out that as far as I know it's technically illegal right now to use them without an operator's license from the FCC...but nobody bothers because the law is not enforced. It may be the same way after the UHF spectrum is sold off next year.

As I said, I don't really know all the details here and only have a sketchy idea as to all of this. It may be that there have been some recent developments I'm unaware of. Maybe Steve House or Ty Ford or somebody else can chime in and fill us all in on the state of things.

In the meantime, you've got close to a year to use your system under the current frequency rules. We'll see what happens after that.

Bernie,
Are you sure the MZ-M200 has an add on AA battery pack? I'm pretty sure that's the model I have (I don't have it handy to check), and it most certainly does not. In fact, that's my biggest complaint with it. Changing the internal battery is so simple, so I guess that's the next best thing.

Don't you guys in the US have somebody like this to keep you right on what's going on

https://www.jfmg.co.uk

Apparently not. :)