John, how do you set the levels on your H4n? I put mine in an unattended position as a backup in case my feed from the mixer fails, but I always have trouble setting the levels.

When I do event filming, there is a mix of live music and public speakers, and if I set the levels to the people speaking (say around 70), then it overdrives during the music, and if I set it to the music levels (say around 30), then the public speakers are way down and I have to bring the levels up so high in post that you hear a lot of the noise floor.

"The H4 has XLR inputs so a pair of XLR-XLR cables, and a pair of TRS (tip-ring-sleeve) 1/4" jack to XLR cables or adapters should cover 95% of cases you might meet -- and obviously, better still, talk to whoever is doing the sound beforehand, if that's an option!"
- The H4n XLR inputs are mic level only, so attenuation would be needed if taking a line-out from a house mixer. The Zoom's 1/4" line input is unbalanced -10dB.. Most TRS 1/4" line out from mixers are +4dB so a 10 to12 dB attenuation pad would be needed. Simply reducing the record level on the Zoom won't help as the inputs stage is would still be over driven w/o a pad.

craftech,
As I mentioned above, recording a pristine board signal to an unsynced outboard device, and then using a muffled, significantly delayed on-camera mic as the primary sync source just seems completely counterintuitive to me. It's impossible to line up waveforms when there are three or four major reflections coming at you several ms apart. Better to park the H4, recording in the back of the room and pray you don't need it as a primary backup (although it's been a show-saver for me!).

At least one audio channel on each camera needs the clean board feed for reference and continuity (tape or card changes). Never found a better way, even with the advantage smpte freerun and genlock offers..

So I used the Rode NTG1 on one of my Z1's channels. It worked OK but as expected it's echoey.

I was on the back row, below the mixing desk, so the girl in there threw me down an XLR lead but said she wasn't sure what would come out of it. I stuck it in the Z1's 2nd channel. Could barely hear anything with the cam set to line level, so I switched it to mic level and the level was on a par with what the NTG1 was giving me. Now it's in Vegas I can see from the waveform that it's very limited/compressed. One of the 2 presenters mics is a bit distorted in the loud parts, the other is OK. The video segments of the presentation sound great. Plenty of that track is usable.

The H4's menu system is indeed a nightmare. With no dress rehearsal, and only one of me, I set it to auto gain (I think!) and put it on a tripod. It worked OK and sounds very similar to the NTG1 result. We may use a little room noise and applause that it recorded.

I was hearing plenty of unwanted crackles and noise through my Sony MDR-7506 headphones plugged into the Z1. Not sure what caused that. It's not there in the recording. I neglected to turn off phantom power on the channel receiving the signal from the mixing desk. Would that maybe cause the problem?

Rory, good point about the torch. The light on my phone rescued me a couple of times.

Got another chance at a different school tomorrow. For a change I might stick the H4 on auto-gain on the board and use the AT825 on the Z1. Or I might go the same again but just use one of the AT825's channels into the Z1 instead of the NTG1. I've been kind of underwhelmed by the NTG1 each time I've used it.

Rory, sorry for the delay. Busy day.

I've been a big fan of the AT-822 stereo microphone for 5 years. I've worked with phantom-powered mics, XLR cables, and a little portable mixer feeding my laptop for performances, and frankly I get a very decent sound with just the AA-powered AT-825, SHIELDED stereo miniplug cables, and the Tascam DR-07 (the onboard mics are pretty crummy). The AT-822 has capsules angled 120 degrees and the noise level is plenty good for the live performances I record. A retired audio recording pro friend of mine once did a parallel setup to mine for a performance, and we compared the sound afterwards. He had wonderful mono mics set up as a coincident pair and the sound quality was very similar to the little AT-822--but his mics were a LOT quieter.

Anyway, I almost always use the stereo mic as a two-channel source. If I need a mono source I can always combine the two channels during the edit. But then the mic is not very directional.

One thing about the Tascam DR-07--signals coming in over the external mic input go through a stage or two of amplification before hitting the record level wheel. This means that if you have to set the record wheel to anything less than about "6" (on a 1 to 10 scale) then you will overload those first stages and get clipping. The solution is simple--just back off your gain setting from high to medium or from medium to low and then readjust the record wheel. But you've probably already discovered this for yourself. For all I know, maybe the Zoom recorder behaves in a similar fashion.

Nick: Sorry to hear about your issues. I've never tried feeding phantom power back up into a mixing station but would assume it wouldn't like it very much. It would sure be nice to get a bit of prep time with the sound person so these things could be sorted out in advance. For one play I did a few months ago I used one of my DR-07s to record from the sound board. There were about 10 performers with wireless mics. Their voices came across well; too well, in fact. Somehow the board operator had given me a channel that had every wireless mic hot all the time, so I was privy to every whispered discussion by off-stage actors in addition to the on-stage talent. About halfway through the show I even was treated to the unmistakable sound of a zipper and subsequent urination, just like Leslie Nielsen in the "Naked Gun" movie.

Fortunately we were able to record the following night's performance, and this time the sound guy just gave me a tap from the board output.

Quote:
I was hearing plenty of unwanted crackles and noise through my Sony MDR-7506 headphones plugged into the Z1. Not sure what caused that. It's not there in the recording. I neglected to turn off phantom power on the channel receiving the signal from the mixing desk. Would that maybe cause the problem?
----------------
Yes, sending phantom power through your board-connection cable can cause audio grief. Demonstrated that for myself recently while shooting a musical. The audio guy noticed distortion after a while, and asked if I had phantom turned on. Yes, embarrassingly, I did. Turned it off, and the audio from that point on was much better. The problem wasn't too noticeable in the "house" (but the sound guy DID notice it), but it was quite evident when I was doing postproduction on my computer.

ALSO... as someone mentioned upstream in this thread, the Zoom H4 (and H4N) allegedly takes line-level input, but in my experience that just about always results in bad clipping on a lot of the audio track. If my board connection is line-level, I ALWAYS attenuate to mic level before going into the H4.

A little device I've come to love is the ART Dual RDB Dual Re-Amping Direct Box($79 at B&H). It's got two channels, and each has variable attenuation.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/844853REG/ART_DUAL_RDB_Dual_RDB_Dual.html
(Don't know if that link is going to work - I formatted it the way the forum instructions say, but so far it doesn't look "live". Maybe when I post this message. If the link doesn't work, just go to bhphotovideo.com and search for the ART Dual RDB)

Nick, sounds like you are on the way to a good workflow. Keep the positive attitude.

That Rode is really a good mic; a tight shotgun in a live room should only be used as a primary audio source as a last resort. Try shooting from a higher vantage point or even point it at the overhead speakers as others have suggested.

Here you go, Earthrisers.

Don't know what was wrong with the original link.

" as someone mentioned upstream in this thread, the Zoom H4 (and H4N) allegedly takes line-level input
-- That would've been me. To reiterate, the H4n's XLR inputs are Mic level only and often mistaken for line level by inexperienced users.
Another common error as 'riredale' stated, is overloading the input stage of budget recorders. Many users assume that simply lowering the recorder's record volume will mitigate those issues when in fact will not if the input stage is overdrive... most commonly, feeding line level from a mixer to the recorder's mic level input. OR.. feeding +4dB (nominal) to a -10dB 1/4 input, on the H4n for instance.

To clarify, the mic sensitivity switch on the side reduces the analog levels to the initial preamp section, and the internal gains (volume) adjust the digital levels to the recording section. One should adjust the mic sensitivity to a slightly conservative level first, with the gains set at 100.

Nick Hope said:
"I stuck it in the Z1's 2nd channel. Could barely hear anything with the cam set to line level, so I switched it to mic level and the level was on a par with what the NTG1 was giving me. Now it's in Vegas I can see from the waveform that it's very limited/compressed. "

Sony cameras and many audio recorders etc "line" levels are +4dBm.
In the world of sound re-inforcement you'll probably never, ever find a signal at +4dBm. As one sound guy said, if you do, RUN, the ceiling is going to come down.

When recording into video cameras there another trap, some, not all, have peak limiters which cannot be defeated i.e. they're still there even with AGC Off. That can make it very confusing trying to set levels. They're arguably not a bad "feature" as they'll save you from digital clipping when you've got wind blowing over a mic but you need to avoid setting the gain controls on the camera too high else even though AGC id Off you'll get a well compressed recording. Any sign of that Red segment lighting up can mean you're really slaming the recording hard into a limiter. As I said this varies from camera to camera. Ten minutes before the curtain goes up is not the time to try to figure out what your particular camera is doing.

The other confounding issue today is el cheapo devices such as the Zoom H4 and H4n use digital gain control which is rather nasty. Traditionally with any audio chain less gain, less level = less distortion. Digital gain control turns that on its head. Feed a hot signal into a Zoom and turn the gain down and the distortion levels go up.

"I've been kind of underwhelmed by the NTG1 each time I've used it"

It is a cheap single element pressure gradient hyper cardiod.
All such mics have a serious issue inside a room, the LF polar response is different to the mid frequency polar responce. So you end up with a lot of the room's LF (<120Hz) reflections in their output. You need to use the phased array hyper cardiods to deal with this problem e.g. Sanken CS-3e. I'm blessed as I have access to the Sanken CMS-10 but that's way over the budget of us mortals :(


Also yes, the Zoom's menu system and level controls are a nightmare. These are simply not a device to be used by someone whose also got to wrangle a camera, people standing in front of the lens and all the other stresses of shooting stage events.

I use the Edirol R-44. It isn't Sound Devices quality but it's around 1/3 the price and arguably easier to use. It does run from mains and battery i.e. if you loose the mains feed it seemlessly switches to its 4x AA batteries. This has saved me several times. It has easy to use gain and level controls that you can operate whilst looking at the meters. I can set the level controls so I have more than 10dB headroom, way more for some things coming into it. Recording 48KHz/24bit, in post with Vegas I can add 20dB of digital gain and it still sounds great. Unlike the Zoom products recording 24bit compared to 16bit makes sense
Other nice features on the R-44 are being able to bank switch phantom power and per input limiters. With this one can still use condensor mics without sending 48V back to a desk.
The R-44 is around $1,000. I know that's still a fair slab of cash but it will outlast several generations of video cameras. My original R-4 was bought before HDV was sprung on us and it still works today when we're talking about 3D and 4K. I expect the R-44 to be in my estate auction. One word of caution, I really cannot recommend the R-4, it's fine but it has a few vices that Edirol addressed in the R-44 and as it has a spinning disk it is power hungry and it will not switch from DC In to battery. Lose mains and you'll lose a recording :(

Bob.

Bob, please let me know when your estate auction is going to take place. It sounds like you get to play with a bunch of cool stuff.

It would be helpful if you planned your demise for a Friday, so I could have time to fly all the way down there and back over the weekend.

I use the Edirol R-44.

For a little less than half the cost, the newish Roland R-26 has had some good reviews and looks like it could be more solid/serious than the Zoom/Tascam recorders.

Recording the Shark Guardian presentation was a bit of a disaster at the 2nd school for various reasons including very low lighting on the presenters, but I got some good stuff afterwards. I take back what I said about the NTG-1, which I thought did a pretty good job of these interviews. There were some noisy boats on the river next to us and they're not even audible. I recorded it through the Z1.

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