No, you didn’t buy “the mic twice;”  rather, after four years of “constant usage,” you replaced a mic that served you incredibly well, in my estimation.  We have NO idea how the mic was handled, packed, transported, or in what environments it was used.

The real issue:  What are your expectations for a piece of equipment?

Frankly, you should carry duplicates of ANYTHING that is crucial to your production.  Is that an expensive idea?  It’s all relative.  If I am 3000 miles away from the studio, recording a crucial client interview and something goes wrong, how do I explain to the folks paying the bills that I only have one recorder?

Gee, that’s impressive and that’s the last time they’ll hire me.

Always, ALWAYS, have a backup Plan B.

I was an international spokesperson for Hasselblad AB for years, traveling through 24 countries with the Hasselblad team.  The majority of stuff we carried was CYA – cover your act – in case something went down badly in, oh, Shanghai, Mexico City, Toronto, Houston . . .

The audience, the client, all expect results, not excuses.

I use, among others, a Sennheiser MHK60, that “$1500 mic” you were talking about.  That’s just one Sennheiser shotgun I carry.  Cheap insurance.  That’s why I drive such an old car!

I think camcorder makers need to include good sound recording. Include Bluetooth, RF and a shotgun-quality microphone directly in or on the top of the camera to use affordable but high quality wireless microphones if needed or have a high quality built-in or included shotgun microphone solution on top. I don’t want to spend $1500 on a microphone. I already spent $400 for my Sennheiser MK400 that I actually bought twice because my old one broke after 4 years of constant usage.

 Thanks, as I appreciate your quick and candid reply. 

I’m sure we both want videographers to aspire to greatness and, yes, demonstrating the default mic is useful, especially in a challenging, unforgiving high-level ambient environment. 

The comparison between just OK and the best possible isn’t worthless;  on the contrary, aren’t we both trying to educate and inspire folks as to what is possible?  I am confident we both want creative people to have those “ah-ha” moments, then move to the next quality level?

However, there are outstanding systems like Beachtek, which I use, which are excellent in helping me and thousands of other achieve the best sound possible, regardless of the hardware we are using.

Gosh, we could send people out to buy a unit from SoundDevices, yes, but the quality feed still needs to come from somewhere!  Great recordings come from a great feed.  You can’t fix lousy location audio in post.  That’s why people do ADR and looping.

So it’s worthless for people to hear the sound quality of the default built-in mic at default level in a noisy environment? And I should always walk around conferences with Canon’s proprietary external microphone adapter just so you can hear how it can sound when people have that equipment. All my own videos with my Sanyo HD1000 that I film with since 2007 use the Sennheiser MK400 external shotgun microphone, but it’squite simply imcompatible with Canon cameras because Canon is a proprietary company.

Beachtek makes the incredible DXA-HDV professional XLR adapter frr HDV camcorders, with gain controls, 48v phantom power for condenser mics, and an headset jack, plus an aux feed.

Pardon the lecture, folks, but get professional.  World-class audio will trump mediocre video any day.  As will the audience.

Cheers Mate
Parham @ [email protected]