Splitting audio question
 

I've been shooting some things for a friend with his camera, which is an XL2. Neither of us can figure out how to record the camera mic onto one channel and an external mic onto the other channel. No combination of the switches seems to do anything. Is there some menu setting I need to do first?

Hi Bill,

The onboard mic included with the XL2 is a stereo mic, and therefore it always requires two channels. Unfortunately there's no way on the XL2 to force both channels of the included stereo mic into one single channel... it always needs two. So, if you want to use the included onboard mic plus an external mic, that's a three-channel proposition. You'll have to go to four-channel 12-bit mode. The first stereo pair is the onboard mic; and one channel from the second stereo pair is your external mic. With this mode, you still have another channel free, for an additional external mic if desired.

If you don't want to resort to four-channel 12-bit mode and prefer instead to stay in two-channel 16-bit mode, then remove the included stereo mic and replace it with a mono mic (the clamp should hold a shotgun Senn or AT easily). Then you'll be working with just one stereo pair... one channel for your mono onboard mic, the other channel for your external mic. Hope this helps,

Thanks. I'll see if I can get the guy to dump that stereo mic.

Thanks again for that info, Chris. I had an old mic off a BVW300 that's a petty good mic, and we switched it out with that stereo mic, and I was able to run two channels fine. When doing interviews I generally mic with an MKH60 and let the camera mic pick up the interviewer's voice in case I want that.

Bill,

I assume you are using the back XLR#1 for the input?

Thanks, LOU

I believe I sent the shotgun mic into XLR channel 1 and the camera mic into XLR channel 2.