just wanted to say thank you all!

Coming from a pro sound background...

Any decent mixer will have "preamp"'s. That's the primary purpose of the channel strips on a mixer - to provide per-input (per-mic-line) preamps (complete with padding/gain adjustment, eq, routing options, solo options, etc etc.)

If you are worried at all about sound, do not use consumer or prosumer grade gear with two-conductor connections.

They are an invitation to electro-magnetic interference of nearly every type.

To be fair, in many cases and situations [con/pro]-sumer gear will be more than adequate.

But in a "bad" environment, the [con/pro]-sumer gear will be picking up and recording noise long before that same noise will even register above the overall noise floor with pro gear.

If good sound is your goal, then XLR/TRS/balanced lines are the ONLY way to go. Accept no substitute.

If you want flexibility and good sound, then you should probably go with a smallish off-board mixer, good mics, XLR/TRS lines, and sufficient adapters ("gender-benders") to get it all wired up.

By the way, any time one has two or more pieces of gear (such as perhaps a wall wart power supply and then a mixer or amplifier or recorder or whatever) plugged into two or more different AC (wall) sockets or circuits, one is exposing oneself to potential ground loops (the dreaded AC hum.) There are ways to deal with that, although it is often the most common source of noise (that and triac/scr light dimmers) and can be devilish to track down and isolate.

Two more points: A couple good small mixers are the Mackie 1202/1402 (depending on how many mic lines one wants) or the Behringer battery powered mini-mixer designed explicitly for video sound and which includes phantom power in spite of being battery-driven.

Finally, mic-level signal loss is generally not a problem with XLR/TRS/balanced lines. In my former pro sound rig, we would routinely run 50 foot or longer mic lines into the 100 foot snake (a total of 150 feet or more) without significant degradation of the signal.

- Lance

If i buy the mka 300 do i need a pre amp and mixer unit?
My plan is to make a little wire (small male stereo jack to 2 small female mono jacks), so i will record the mono from the sten on one track, and record an external radio mic on the other track live. This way i have 2 completely different sound sources.
any criticism of this?

It should work well as the mic input is simply waiting for two seperate signals. You won't have any control over the 'loudness' of the relative signals, so the hot 300 might hold down the other mic. Also if in auto level control the limiter acting on one mic will automatically squash the signal from the other, even of it's signal was far from overlaad.

tom.

Thanks. no control over loudness? I take it your not just on about the volume control here, which i thought would be ideal on the canon. Does the mk300 use power from the camera battery, and therefor produce a louder signal than a radio mic or wired mic might? Also how does this affect the batterys performance. Is is a big difference?
I just feel it seems mad that you should pay over a thousand pounds for a camera, then have to spend money on a mike, and loose the stereo function. Which means more work in post trying to produce a stereo sound.

The MKE300 (and the D version, which you'll probably need to buy to stop hum spoiling your audio) is self powered by a single silver oxide cell contained within the body of the mic. There's a little on/off switch with a flashing LED to say the batt's ok. No power is taken from the camcorder.

Let's say you wire this up with a much less sensitive mic on the other channel. The sensitive 300 will produce a big signal which will trigger the camcorder's limiters to 'squash down' the audio to stop it clipping - a horrible noise in digital audio. This will 'squash down' the other channel as well, making that sound track (maybe recorded in another room) go quieter.

tom.

cheers with you now. So if i use the manual audio level function and adjust the left and right volumes accordingly i should be able to overcome this problem.

Though this thread is over a year and half old, I found it extremely helpful. Thank you, everyone, for your input!

That's why the archives and the search facility are so useful. I find I can type something into the search box - 'multi-coating' say, and spend a happy hour reading much good advice and learning a lot about the subject.

Tom - yer got that right Pal! - AND my levels of understanding have changed. Stuff that went completely OVER my head 2 years back, now means something to me. AND I've found that I will only research something that I need at one particular time.

Chris and all the Guys and Gals at DVinfo . .THANK YOU and a big hug too!

Graham "Grazie" Bernard