Audio quality / mic location for windproofing purposes

Question

5.76K viewsJanuary 22, 2021Hardwarehardware

J Maertens Posted October 24, 2015

Hi there,

Just received my first tentacle sync because my camera department forced me to purchase one even though I have plenty of other time code solutions… decision made based on form factor and weight considerations.

Now, I’m starting to play around with it and I have two questions …

a) where exactly is the mic located so I can put something over it for wind protection when shooting outdoors

b) was this mic intended for anything other than the use of syncing to audio, as my camera person has put it forward to the director as a means of recording production audio for the person holding the camera, but after recording said microphone, I am not convinced that this is a good idea … sound quality seems pretty low, no actual presence, lots of hiss and low level tc bleed in the signal … or is there something wrong with the microphone in mine ?

Any help would be most appreciated as I start shooting in two days for a 25 day shoot.

Kind regards,

Johan Maertens

3 Answers

score 0 · Answer 1 · 2015-10-24T16:37:42+00:00

The mic is situated next to the usb plug. But if i were you i would not use a wind cover at all. The mic is intended for guide track only, not even for syncing. The last thing you want is that this mike will end up being used as real audio. Keep it as crap as possible!

score 0 · Answer 2 · 2015-10-25T09:58:03+00:00

0

J Maertens Posted October 25, 2015 0 Comments

Yeah, figured as much … thanks.

score 0 · Answer 3 · 2015-10-25T12:40:46+00:00

One line of your text wonders me: (not in your case specifically but more in general)

because my camera department forced me to purchase one even though I have plenty of other time code solutions

Why are YOU asked to buy something that is for the camera? You have timecode on your recorder, the camera has not. That is their problem, right? Let the cameradep buy one themselves! Why do we sound guys need to buy Tentacles, Deneckes or Ambients? Yeah, we can, and rent them out, but the thing will be on the camera, why do we need to bring it along with a large assortiment of cables for all different kinds of camera’s? We don’t use them, the camera does. And if there is a sync problem they blame sound, not camera! Where the problem is usually at camera side…

The only answer i can think of is that the camera dep usually doesn’t know much about sync but sound dep usually a lot more. They should be really thankful for our efforts in this knowledge.