In today’s seminar, we were introduced to audio mixers in order to complete a whole audio setup. Having only used SLRs with crappy audio before, all this ‘proper’ sound recording is new to me. Towards the beginning of the class, terms like audio channels, levels, or phantom power sounded just like gibberish to me but after a bit of practice, everything is slowly starting to fall into place. Below are some of the settings and processes we’ve learned today.
1) Set up the boom mic, and plug the cable into Channel 1 of the mixer on the left hand side. Make sure the input settings are MIC (as you’re plugging in the mic), and power is Phantom (the mic’s power comes from the mixer).
2) To get a good level, we need to turn the fine control to 0, and adjust the course control so that the peak noise is at 0. If during a scene someone’s voice rises or lowers, we can then tweak the fine control.
3) If there is only one mic, you would turn the knob below the fine control to center, and if there are two mics Channel 1 would be turned to left and Channel 2 would be turned to right.
4) Connect the headphones to the mixer and turn it on to INT power (so it comes from batteries not wall plug). Adjust the volume is necessary.
5) Once everything for the mixer is set up, we can then move on to connecting it to the camera. On the right hand output side, connect the Loom cable from the mixer to the camera. Make sure the input settings for the camera are LINE this time (because the audio is coming from the loom and not directly from the mic).
6) Connect the smaller jack to the camera headphone output, and change the mixer setting to RTN, so that the sound you are hearing is coming from the camera, not the mixer. This is to make sure that the loom is working correctly.
7) If only one mic is connected, which is the case when shooting drama, we can adjust the bracket so that Channel 1 is at around -10db and Channel 2 is at around -20db. If two mics are connected, both would be set to around -10 db because the two audio tracks are equally important.
8) If the mixer runs out of battery, we can connect the mic directly to the camera, but it is essential to change the input settings on the camera from LINE to MIC.
After learning all this, we completed an exercise in groups, with each person taking turns as sound operator, actor or DOP. We weren’t completely sure what we were doing and needed some help, but slowly figuring out all the settings and cable connections helped me grasp the general idea of setting up sound recording. During my turn as sound operator I found that it was hard to remove the significant ambient noise in the room, with some background noises being as loud as Aidan’s voice. This would be something I have to explore more in the future to learn how to best minimise background noise when in a loud environment.
