Technology and Innovation

Audio:
There are two locking XLR inputs well positioned on the right side of the HD200U. The audio is compressed in MPEG-1 Audio Layer II at 384kbps when recording in HDV mode. While recording in DV mode, the audio is recorded at 16-bit, 48kHz. We recorded audio in both modes using two different mics. We tested the on-camera mini-shotgun by speaking in a normal voice at three and six feet away.
With the Automatic Gain Control on, our peak levels were well below the -12dB level indicator. With AGC off, to get levels peaking at around -12dB at the three-foot distance, we needed to set levels to nine. At six feet, the levels predictably dropped about 20%. At these high level settings, we did notice a fair amount of amplification noise.
Our next test simulated a more common situation where we had the same person speaking into a handheld mic powered by the HD200U’s phantom supply. AGC worked well but still gave us what seemed like more headroom than necessary. In manual mode, a setting of six was all that was needed to get strong levels that produced a very clean signal. We left the audio limiter on in all cases and found that even the occasional overdriven input did not produce objectionable clipping.