Yes. A long cable should be balanced, so this would be the wrong way to do it.Originally Posted by MrMicah
Yes. A long cable should be balanced, so this would be the wrong way to do it.
You can reduce the risk of interference by unplugging what's not needed & keep the room as quiet as possible and you should be fine.
:-) ... The power of prayer.
I realise that a mic with an unbalanced output is not ideal, but I guess its relatively common for people starting out with trying to do sound better than using the camera mic, or just a mic mounted on the camera.
I see all sorts of transformer type discussions, 1:1 ratios, hum reducers etc which seem to be saying that you can take a signal from an unbalanced source and make it balanced by a transformer type of circuit in one of the various products.
I can't imagine that a heavy, powerered, transformer type thing is going to be put on the end of a boom pole. The Balan discussed at the start of this thread seems to be a passive transformer, so it creates the inverted signal out of the single input. I was just trying to work out how to use it in a length of cable.
My instinct was that using the balun just before a recorder, when all of the leads were unbalanced up to that point, was not sensible as you would just create a balanced inverted signal of all of the noise picked up in the cables. So I just needed to check that I'll need to insert a balun (or some unbalanced to balanced conveerter) as close to the microphone end as possible.
(Or get an XLR mic)
The balun (balancedunbalanced) terminates the balanced signal at the camera/recorder end. This maintains the balanced signal throughout the cable run. If the run is unbalanced, the balun won't make it balanced. So, I guess, for now you'll have to live with an unbalanced signal.
If you pick up a hum, you can clean it with a noise remover or noise gate in post.
The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.
record a balanced mic on zoom h1 ?
does this audio post production trick allows us to record a balanced mic (such as a Azden SGM-1X) on a unbalanced inputs recorders such as a the cheap zoom h1 without loosing quality? is there a free software or premiere plugin that can do this audio trick ? it also means that if i just add the left+right channel the balanced signals on left and right should cancel my sound is it right ?Beware of connecting the + and - signals as L and R stereo inputs, that may cause problems (or maybe not, if you invert one channel and add them - a way of recording a balanced signal with unbalanced equipment...)
thanks for your help i now have a rode videomic that i record on my zoom h1, will i get much better sound quality if i buy a Azden SGM-1X + a cheap xlr to jack passive adapter to record on my zoom h1 and do your software trick on the balanced audio signals in the right and left audio channels ? (i want to avoid the extra cost of buying a zoom h4n that has a balanced input ). why don't they put this software trick inside the zoom h1 as a recording option ?
i was just wondering why not put the recorder near the mic on the boom pole (a zoom h1 is super light and small), then if there is just a less than 1 foot cable between the mic and the recorder will it be necessary to consider balancing the audio ? or do you still get some important noise even on a 1 foot cable ?
I guess you could wire a balanced signal to a 3.5 mm TRS jack, you'd end up with the two phases recorded separately to the L & R channels of the H1 recording. Alternatively you could use a balun to combine the two phases and record to one channel of the H1. The outcome would be the same except you'd only have one balanced channel in post.
No, if you use an XLR -> to TRS adaptor it will ground out the inverted phase and the signal will be unbalanced. I guess, in post, you could copy the signal to another track, invert the copy and it would balance the signal in playback. But it seems like a lot of hassle just to save a few bucks on balun adaptor.
Did you read post #1?
Sure, it's highly unlikely that you'd get signal interference on such a short cable run.
The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.
I thought I'd share this here, as I recently got my hands on a Sennheiser ME66 and needed an XLR "preamp". I could have purchased a new recorder (which I will do in the future anyway), but I came across this and thought I'd give it a go.
Haven't yet got it, but it might be worth looking at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io-JR3aUqII
Why do you need a preamp?
The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.
Because my Zoom H1 introduces too much "noise floor" buzz with an XLR to 3.5mm cable.
So you're adapting from XLR to a 3.5 mm cable at the mic end?
The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.
ME66 is an XLR mic, that is battery powered. I use an XLR to 3.5mm cable to feed the Senny sound into my Zoom H1. I have to boost the input volume on my Zoom H1 to hear a signal, which also tends to raise the noise floor too much.
The signal is unbalanced at the mic end, so your whole cable run is unbalanced. I seriously doubt that a cheap pre would be any cleaner than those in the H1. I'd be inclined to terminate the balanced signal with a balun at the recorder end first, see post #1, before considering another pre in the signal path. As for the weak signal, have you adjusted the H1's attenuator?
Last edited by HueyNRolf; 2013 April 7th at 02:49.
The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.
Unless I'm missing something, the Zoom H1 lacks one.
From the front on the right side, there is 'input level buttons.' Is that a three-way switch (lo-med-high)?
The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.
It's a simple input levels adjustment. One to lower the volume, one to raise the volume.
I plugged the mic, with the same cable, into my HV30 and turned the attn function on. This didn't work at all though, I couldn't hear anything coming through my headphones. When I turned it off and manually adjusted the volume... I again couldn't get MUCH of a signal.
The preamps in the Zoom H1 seem to be better than those of the HV30, but still not THAT good. I'm uploading a simple test I did with the mic and my Zoom H1 now. I imagine you would have better speakers than I do (Studio monitors perhaps?). You should be able to tell me what I'm hearing.
It should be online within an hour of this post:
Also, Huey... as a side note, please don't read my replies as rudeness. I do appreciate all the advice you're giving. I'd really like to be able to use this mic at it's best, but I don't really have the budget to do so at the moment. I've been looking at the Tascam DR40 as an option, and I am told the preamps are pretty damn good. The iRig Pre is a low-budget alternative for now, mostly as an attempt to be able to use this mic for a short film project I have coming up very soon.
Ah yeah, I think I've got it. I thought the right side was attenuation with gain on the left (volume adjustment buttons). Looks like that's the headphone volume, my mistake.
OK, I'll check it out later. Where did you get this mic? I'm beginning to think it might be faulty? I'm sure you've checked that the battery is good and it could be a bad cable, but apart from that, it sounds like the mic might be on the fritz.
I wish, I have a humble pair of Bose high/mids on the wall with a Yamaha sub on the floor (all active). Nothing exotic.
Not at all, no worries there.
Last edited by HueyNRolf; 2013 April 7th at 03:41.
The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.
Daniel, I have a Sennheiser ME80 (a bit longer & even more directional than the 66), and must say that compared to a $100 t.bone shotgun, the Senny is far inferior re. signal strength and noise floor.
Is your Senny old, too? If so, the capsule may have lost some of its electret charge...
Edit:
ATTN ON lowers the mic level, so no wonder... it means "attenuation".
attenuate
verb |əˈtenyoōˌāt| [ trans. ] (often be attenuated)
reduce the force, effect, or value of : her intolerance was attenuated by a rather unexpected liberalism.
Last edited by Janke; 2013 April 7th at 03:41.
I had a listen and I can't hear anything seriously wrong. I pushed my system gain up to full gallop and there is some noise. Did you delete or mute the dead track off the H1 stereo recording? If anything it sounds too hot. You said it wasn't normalized, so what did you set your peak gain at for the recording? I suspect that if you set your gain at -12db for recording and normalize in post, it should be fine.
The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence.
It was normalised in post.
My audio levels were in the 70's (input level on the H1) and hit roughly -24db according to Vegas, and the Zoom H1 screen. If I pushed it higher, I'd have gotten a much more noisy track.
That said, I did a slight noise removal in Adobe Audition and got rid of this.. air/noise I keep hearing without doing much damage to the dynamics of the audio (or introducing digital artifacts as you usually get).
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