Question For The Sound Gods
 

I have a small mic (clip on that is amplified) It's a Radio Shack omnidirectional / impedance 1K ohms...It's an amplified mic with a little switch on it that is powered by watch batteries...it only has a single plug - can I plug this into the small mic outputs and will it work with this camera since it is an amplified mic?? I know the built in mic has two prongs, but this one only has one ....is that okay to use with the XL1S?

Moved your thread to the audio forum. My "guess" would be that it should not
be powered. But I could be wrong on that.

If the plug on the end of the mic cable only has two conductors separated by a single plastic insulator, then you'll need a mono mini female to stereo mini male adapter, then plug it into the larger of the two camera jacks and use new batteries in the mic's power supply.

no, it just has one plug...not two plugs....but i noticed on the camera, there is two plugs for the front mini plugs on the XL1S

I don't mean plugs when I say conductors. Each plug would have either 2 or 3 conductors on it. The camera has a larger jack that is the stereo mic input. The smaller jack supplies power to the stock microphone that came with the camera.
Your Radio Shack mic is probably mono, so it will have two conductors on the single plug. If that's correct then you'll need the mono to stereo adapter that I described, then plug into the larger mic input jack and use the batteries in the mic's switchbox.

ahhh...yes...I got'cha now...thanks for educating me....so much to learn, so little time.
Dean

Would the mono not jsut plug directly into the stereo jack? Doesn't it just skip the splitting of the left and right and combine the two on the larger conductor? I think I'm right, but someone correct me if I'm wrong... if you plug a mono mic into a stereo plug it will convert to mono on both channels...

Generally, when you plug a mono mic into a stereo input, you get a dual channel mono recording. This isn't always the case, however. It depends entirely on how the manufacturer set it up.

In practice, it often simply causes unpredictable problems with additional hums, buzzes and loss of signal on one channel.

Typically, if you connect a mono mic (e.g., the Sennheiser MKE300) that uses a standard mono 1/8" (3.5 mm) mini phone plug in to the XL1 you get mono sound on the left channel and nothing on the right channel. This is because the mono mini phone plug only as a tip and sleeve contact, The sleeve contact is longer and makes contact with both the ground and right channel input on the xl1 mic jack.

If you buy a mono-to-stereo 1/8" adapter, the plug poriton has three contact areas; i.e., the tip (left channel), the ring (right channel, and the sleeve (ground). This adapter has the effct of feeding the same mono signal to both channels at the same time.

The main down sides are that the inputs are in parallel, so the input impedance presented to the mic is 300 ohms, which will cut the effective output of the mic by as much as half depending on the mic. Also, a long adapter stack sticking out of the mic jack increases the risk of breaking the jack if something pulls the wires.

The more professional mono mics and many wireless mics have what is called balanced output, and they may come with a connecting wire that provids a stereo mini phone jack at the end to stick into the camcorder. This connect will likely provide out-of-phase signals to the left and right channel. This will sound a bit odd when played ona sero system, and can present a problem with signal cancellation if played on a mono system. (Balanced audio system have a distinct advantage in that they provide cancellation of electrical noise picked up by the mic cables.)

The smaller jack (2.5 mm) by the XL1 mic jack provides 5 vDC power to the Canon standard mic. This is NOT pahntom power. It is system that is essentially unique to Canon and was used on the older Canon camcorders as well; e.g., the L1/2 and A1.