DV recorder

Kcox

I figure there are probably a bunch of folks out there with camcorder experiences, can anyone recommend something with decent sound recording ability?

Thanks,

Kevin

Josh Hegg

My Sony is great. The mic on it is the best in the camera mic I have found.

go here for some good digging

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/d/Reviews& ... corder.htm

Cheers,
Josh

Bob Holo

If the camcorder has a line-in you could do an external mic preamp like the ones made by Jon Enoch (Visivox) or Chris Church (Church Audio) These little 9v battery powerd things are about the size of a pack of cigarettes and cost ~$100. I believe they both have ebay stores. You just run a decent mini-plug terminated external XY or Boom or ORTF mic through them to the line-in. The quality of recording you'll get this way will surprise you (good surprise) assuming you have a good mic and know how to use it and set levels etc.. I've owned both Visivox and Church - both fine units. I like the Visivox 2nd generation preamp (the more expensive of the two) because it has a built in RF filter and a selectable low-order lowcut filter at 75Hz that does wonders for mic rumble without significantly impacting the linearity of the rest of the recording. Low-cut filters that are too high or too steep make post production more difficult.

Some built in mic preamps are pretty good - but a lot of them are cost reduced to the point where the dynamic headroom suffers. Some significantly alter the signal coming in by auto-leveling everything to -3db and then choking on loud transients and wind up producing a recording that lacks dynamics and sounds hard/harsh.