Try a trim level of -30 on your EX, that'll give you some head room.

Yes, the same principles would apply to mic or line level. I haven't used an EX-1 so take my advice with a grain of salt since I don't base it on direct experience, but what I'd do is match the nominal output level setting in the receiver menu to the input sensitivity trim setting in the camera menu. The input sensitivity is the input signal level that produces normal recording levels with the input control dial at its midpoint (5). According the the manual, when the input is set to mic level the camera input sensitivity trim can be adjusted between -8dBu and -65dBu in 3dB increments, with a factory default setting of -41dBu. Remember that minus 8 is LESS sensitive than minus 65, meaning a stronger signal will be required to drive it when set to -8 than when set to -65. Turning the input level control dial up to full scale, 10, increases the recording level by 12dB while turning it down below 5 reduces the recording level. (I'll bet the camera input controls are really attenuators with zero attenuation when they're all the way up but the numbers work out either way.) The receiver nominal output level can be adjusted within a range of +12dBu down to -30dBu. You want the camera dial to stay around its mid-point to three-quarter up so pick a number somewhere in the range where they overlap, between -8 and -30, and set both the camera input trim and the receiver output to it. If the camera input sensitivity is set to minus 17dBu or minus 14dBu, the receiver is set to minus 18dBu output level, and the transmitter meter is showing full deflection on peaks, I'd expect to see normal levels on the camera's meters with the input dial set between 4 to 6.

Malcolm, I found the same thing -- no combination of settings produces a good Line signal between these bits.

Can you comment on my audio samples posted above? Is the distortion in the first similar to what you have heard? Is it adequately GONE in the second clip?

I will try this. Is this a squelch level (anything below this will be taken to zero?)

tone

Get the talent to speak up a lot and then cause that to bang into a limiter or compressor with a slow release time and their voices will push that ambient noise level down.

Obviously the first half of that is less technically complicated. The second bit is called sound mixing and takes years to learn through practice. In fact the old Micron radio mic's had a section on doing this in the manual and advised hitting the inbuilt limiter hard for news reports on the side of roads.

I was out recording a live concert using the EX1's built-in mikes and the distortion was there and far worse.

The sound was loud, but the visual levels on the manually-set input never rose above 70% of the travel. I have not yet switched the camera into a more informative display mode for audio levels (does it have one?), but I'm just stymied. I think there is some circuit quite near the camera -- and one common to built-in mikes and external mikes -- that is screwing this up.

This is depressing me now. I am supposed to shoot during the next 2 days.

tone

I only just skimmed this series of posts, so sorry if this is redundant info...

I've gotten burned twice now by the audio inputs on the ex3. No idea if its similar to the ex1 or not, but the problem i've had is sending out line level output into the ex3 but accidently leaving it on mic level in with phantom turned on. Now, this is a pretty stupid mistake to make, and normally easily caught by glancing at the meters, but the weird thing is that the meters on the ex3 look fine, despite being fed a signal blowing the snot out of the inputs. The ex3 headphone output is really quiet, so the soundie would switch to monitoring the mixer vs. the return from the camera and missed the problem for take after take... twice Doh.

Anyways, probably unrelated to your problem, and possibly already covered, but I am now VERY careful when shooting with the ex3 to demand the return is monitored, since the meters on the ex3 (perhaps the undefeatable limiter spoken about earlier) don't give you any indication whatsoever if you overload the input by 20+db. weird.

FYI, I think I am now actually getting fair audio and that my post of the 14th was that listening to the test clips I'd made in XDCAM Clip Browser was creating distortion on playback on my powerbook (for some reason). Importing the same audio into FCP on my iMac shows sound without this distortion.

I can't see how this happened, but have to guess a slightly different codec was used between the two software apps and the two machines.

tone