5 pin XLR wiring configuration?
 

Hi, I need to make up an audio cable to feed from an F350. Can anyone provide me with the pin configuration to hook up two 3 pin XLR's to the audio output?

Thanks,

Peter

Hello Peter,

The connector pinouts are at the back of the user manual. Look in the appendix section.

-gb-

Hi Greg,

Unfortunately, my copy of the user manual(from the cd that came with a demo unit last summer) seems to be missing a few pages in the appendex, and I can't find the information.

I am doing another demo tomorrow, and I want to be able to feed video and audio so I need to make up a cable in advance.

I have asked my dealer for the information, but he hasn't got back to me yet, so I thought I'd try here.

My dealer just sent me the schematic, so I'm all set to go.

Sorry I just got back to this thread or I would have emailed you the necessary pin outs. Your manual should have had that in there.

-gb-

Peter Sony shows that an accessory item # CCXA53//A 5-pin Female XLR To Two 3-pin Male XLR Audio Output Breakout Cable $30.00 .
I think they are refering to your question. look here::
http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Broadcastan...CAM_HD_Cameras


If that's the one, then go BH website here is the part number for less money::
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...ughType=search

find out better and let's know.

William

Also front audio in...
 

While you're making that output cable, consider the possibility that someday you will want to input individual mics to the front 5-pin XLR input. I had both cables made for me, I believe by Markertec although I'm not home to verify the receipt.

This cable lets me record four discrete audio tracks from the two dual-channel ATW-1800 series wireless systems. So you put the two dual channel receivers in a saddlebag such as from Tai Audio, cable up to all four inputs, and you are now recording four wireless mics to all four channels of the F350 without a sound mixer.

The only problem that I have so far failed to solve is monitoring all four channels. As mentioned elsewhere in this forum, the camera give you a choice of 1 & 2 or 3 & 4 but not all four. It would be acceptable to me to monitor 1 & 2 from the camera and 3 & 4 from the headphone out of one of the dual channel receivers and mix them into one stereo headphone signal.

To do this I bought a Rolls stereo mixer that is compact enough to carry on the camera that would mix the camera's stereo and one of the receivers stereo. Good idea, but the Rolls mixer even at full volume attenuates the signals way too much to be usable, I have no idea why. Back to the drawing board.

Tip

Well I made up my cable, and bundled it with a video cable as well. It is about seven feet long, and should serve well for hooking up to feed bulkheads at remote locations.

If I decide to buy the camera(just demoing at this point) I would probably buy or make a shorter one as well.

Tip, your idea is interesting, though I don't think I could manage that much audio and shoot as well. I usually get a sound guy for that sort of work, but your concept would be good in that case. I was thinking of doing a mono adapter, so that I could put a better shotgun mic up front. I'm not sure about the stereo concept just yet. It might be too distracting with sounds coming from out of view on one side or the other.

Thanks to everyone for all the responses.

Peter

You can switch the mic to mono via the menu.

Very interesting Tip! But how do you control the audio from channel 3 and 4? or do you keep it on automatic?

4 channel audio
 

Vincent,

As near as I can discern, tracks 3 & 4 are auto only, which seems to both gain quiet sounds up and limit peaks. Of course you can switch the front input(s) to either 1 & 2 or 3 & 4, but for the way I work, I set tracks 1 & 2 to the rear inputs. So for me, the front 5-pin feeds tracks 3 & 4 and they are on auto all the time AFAIK.

If anyone knows how to switch tracks 3 & 4 to manual, I'm dying to hear it, because there is that little knob on the front that look like it should control them, but according to the manual it just sums with the rear panel volume controls for tracks 1 and 2, and I've read that it actually doesn't even do that -- dead knob until a firmware upgrade.

Anyway, what I've done so far for 1 & 2, and it's worked, is to set the audio just the tiniest bit low for normal speech, -20 for normal accents, seldom -12 for emphasized syllables and turn on the limiters. I've had people shout into their lavs without digital clipping in the camera and normal voice is fine.

Now analog distortion in the wireless pipeline is always a possibility, but that would be the case coming into an over the shoulder mixer just the same. And I think for 1 & 2 I'm getting cleaner sound going straight into the camera than going through a mixer and then through hoppers (second wireless systems from mixer to camera).

So with the limiter, riding the gain becomes unnecessary on 1 & 2. Also as someone who's done plenty of location sound, I can say that manually riding the gain will cause variations in room tone or wild sounds that can make smooth cutting harder.

As for tracks 3 & 4, my experience with auto gain control is that it can give you a fairly high noise floor because it gains up in the absence of louder signals such as voices.

The F350 doesn't seem to be too bad in this respect, but it does take fairly quiet sounds and gain them up, like in the recent shoot I did, the buzzes and whirring noises of a copying machine would be gained up as soon as they started, so room tone kicks up too along with those little sounds.

If the attack and decay of the auto gain on 3 & 4 is quick enough, you could probably just edit out any noise between dialog, but that could be time consuming.

So there is a problem (if I'm right about this) that tracks 3 & 4 (whether assigned to front or back inputs) are always auto, but I can live with it compared to mixing four wireless mics into two channels.

Tip

Not completely true, Tip. The front volume knob at this point only controls volume from the front mic jack and not the rear inputs. So if you set channels 1 and 2 to Front+Side in the menus, it will work for the front mic XLR. Then it becomes a master fader while the side pots become channel faders.

The bug (or complaint), is that this doesn't work when channels 1 and 2 are set to 'rear'.

-gb-

Thanks Greg...
 

Greg, thanks for the clarification. Any ideas on whether 3 & 4 can be set to manual somehow, and if set to the front controlled by the pesky knob?

Tip

Greg, are you saying that you can't control audio with that knob, like on a Betacam? How could this be considered an ENG camera with such a limitation?

Check Greg's post again...
 

Peter,

Check Greg's post again, although the situation is a bit complex his post is clear... the knob does control volume but only if tracks 1 & 2 are set to the front input.

Now I'll make it confusing again: if you send tracks 3 & 4 to the front, the knob won't adjust them because they can't 3 & 4 can't be set to manual. If you set tracks 1 & 2 to the rear inputs, the front knob will not control them but only the rear panel volume knobs.

So only tracks 1 & 2 when on the front input will respond to this knob, and of course they can still be set independently too by the rear panel volume controls.

Tip

Peter, this is where the complaints have come from. ENG users of previous Sony cameras are used to having the front knob control their audio levels even if using the rear XLR jacks.

-gb-

Well the lack of a front control isn't as bad as I feared. I have done some interviews using a Sennhieser wireless system, and set the audio control to auto. It seems to be very good. I haven't noticed any pumping, in fact the room doesn't seem to come up at all between clips.

Just one less thing to worry about, I guess, thought it is fundamentally wrong, in my opinion, for Sony not to have set things up better. Considering their rich history with Betacam, it seems inexcusable.

Hi Peter, remarkably good isn't it? The auto audio on the F350. I use it all the time when I'm not with a sound guy on the road. No pumping or noticeable limiter at all.

Yes the auto mode is great. I'm starting to think that it's purely a limiter(perhaps a compressor/limiter?). On some clips when a person is rather soft spoken, they come in at lower levels, suggesting that there is no auto gain being employed. The rest however are right at the limit, but with no sense of being squashed.

The reporters questions(off axis) also stay way down(I am using a hyper-cardiod mic). During the newsers, I just unplug my wireless, and hook up my cable from the media box, leave everything as it was. Seems to work perfectly.

I'm happy!

Thank you Peter and Vincent for that feedback. I haven't had a need to run auto just yet so this is very good news.

-gb-

Greg, for channel 1, I have found extensive control over the level that AGC works at in the menu(page 110 of the manual). You can select an audio limiter mode, to work with manual mode as well. However, after very close listening(quality headphones) to recorded news clips last night, I could detect no signs of pumping in Auto mode, and it certainly doesn't clip.

I haven't tried it with wired lav mic's yet, but I don't expect any problems.

Peter

Yeah, thanks Peter. I have been through the menus, but settings don't always translate into results. That's why your positive experiences are so beneficial to others.

-gb-

I had a job today at a shipyard. Lots of noise and hectic. I had a wireless lav on 1 and a reporter omni mic on 2. Without the auto audio function I was nowhere! On the flight back home I'd listened to the clips, I really can not hear that's automatic. I wonder how Sony does that...

That's great Vincent, a shipyard would certainly be challenging. This auto capability is going to be very helpful down the line. In particular, two person interviews. In the past I had to put the reporter on CH-2 in auto, and hope for the best. It's going to make it tough for the sound guys.

I had figured on making a 5 pin jack for the front, with one wire for the wireless and the other for a shotgun. I still might, but I have to wonder why.

On a side note, I have been mounting my wireless receiver(horizontally) on the side on my BVV5 BetaSP deck, just under the loading door using velcro. It works very well. It saves having to remove from the back of the battery everytime I need to charge or change.

Is there any reason why that would be a problem on the XDCam?

Pinouts
 

Hi there, I too am looking for the pinouts on the 5pin xlr to 2x3pin xlrs, if someone has them that would be great.

1: ground
2: ->pin2-Ch1
3: ->pin3-Ch1
4: ->pin2-Ch2
5: ->pin3-Ch2

;)

Robert has it correct. But just to be sure there are no phase problems...

Pin 1 - analog ground
Pin 2 - Channel 1 (x) Audio Out
Pin 3 - Channel 1 (y) Audio Out
Pin 4 - Channel 2 (x) Audio Out
Pin 5 - Channel 2 (y) Audio Out

Btw, The 5 pin XLR at the front for the stereo mic follow the same configuration.

Peter

Many thanks guys.

4-channel recording on DigiBeta cameras?
 

Hi there,

I'm intrigued by this discussion of recording 4 tracks of audio on a F350. Just wondering: is there any way to record 4 tracks on a DigiBeta 790 or DigiBeta 970 camera? I've had a look at the specs and neither cameras seem to have a 5-pin audio input so I guess it's not possible.

Many thanks,
Jack