That's correct -- the new software defeats the AGC.

-- peer

Presumably the new software gives the option to disable the AGC.

I dunno about you, but its nice to have CONFIRMATION that you STILL have audio while recording (whether it be meters or audio/headphones.)


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Yes Audio Auto Gain can be turned off completely, by this firmware. And it looks like you can also dial in the amount of gain to be added too.

Audiowise, Nothing new of what Tramm already hasnt done.

Not sure if this is what you were getting at, but yeah, I like to have control over my levels on the fly. First of all, if you're clipping, at least you can do something about it, and second of all, a human riding the gain a little here or there is a lot different than some dumb program doing it. In live event sound, the FOH will often ride the gain if necessary. I personally think of that as a completely different thing (e.g., a human doesn't max out the gain when there's no signal to the point of bringing the noise floor way up, but a human might ride the gain up for a quiet speaker or some other legit reason). Also, riding gain is a huge part of mastering audio, oftentimes it's much preferable to compression or limiting. Now, of course, typically mastering done in post, but the main point remains, that is manually riding gain has its uses and it's very different from AGC IMHO (not to mention how bad Canon's implementation of AGC was).

On another note, one thing that I worry about is how they set the gain based on the manual interface. Because of ML, we know there are actually two parts to the gain they use, analog and digital. I sure hope they ride the analog up first (with no digital), before they start dipping into the digital gain. I know that with a preamp and the digital gain down to zero, I get a pretty clean signal, but it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they messed that up. So, I wouldn't be surprised at all if some of us end up using ML just for audio reasons still (more control over how gain is applied, and live meters).

Peer and Bill,

You're both right. Riding the gain poorly is no better than AGC. But riding the gain well can rescue a signal from clipping or being too low, and can potentially save time in post.

I've read of mixers pushing the gain at the end of phrases for speakers who tend to trail off their words. I know that I've had to do that in post more times than I'd like!

If AGC were as smart as a really skilled live mixer, I'd leave it on. ;)

Of course, if you can get a *really* clean 24-bit signal path, you can just set the levels conservatively and do everything in post without worrying about clipping or noise.

Damn, just got Canon's newsletter and for a moment thought that download is already available. Nice tease :)

Then that would take care of all my requests. Can't wait to download and try it out.