Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Economy Lavalier mic with better than average performance. Good value for price., December 23, 2007
This mic was purchased for use with a Canon HV-20 camcorder. Primary purpose is for videotaping interviews with people who are sitting (not moving around). It comes with a 20' cable, which is more than enough for use in any room in the average size home.
Build quality: better than I expected for the price, the battery and pre-amp holder feel more like aluminum than plastic (it's hard to tell under the black paint). The mic element itself is tiny, and comes with a lapel clip and foam wind screen. The wind screen, like the mic element itself, is tiny and pretty easy to pull off, so keep an eye on it that it doesn't become lost. The battery is one of the "button" types, rather than a "AA" (which I would have preferred). One battery is supplied - I have no idea of how long it might last, so better have a spare. The mike is a condenser type, so it will not work at all if the battery is dead.
Performance: Very good! The sound quality is better than I had expected for the price of this product. Frequency response seems perfectly adequate for picking up voices - which is why you use a lavalier mike in the first place - and signal-to-noise ratio is excellent at the standard gain setting on the HV-20 camcorder. The frequency response in the user manual is 70 to 18,000 hz. This mic has an impedance of 1000 ohms, which places it a step down in performance from more expensive, professional mics which generally have 600ohm impedance (you get a better s/n ratio). I am very pleased with the results from this mic. The captured sound of a person's voice is as clear as it could be, with very little perceptible static. Using this lavalier mic also has the benefit of completely eliminating internal motor noise from the camera's tape mechanism.
SUMMARY: You can spend $200~$500 and get a wireless lavalier mic, or if you live with the 20' cable, get this one for $35. It's certainly good enough for most people's home videos, and the sound quality (for human voice) is excellent. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
NOTE: The ATR-35 is a monaural microphone: when connected to a Stereo mic input jack on a camcorder like the Canon HV-20, it will produce a signal only on the left audio channel. If this is a problem for you, an inexpensive Mono-to-Stereo adapter is available from Radio Shack (p/n 274-374, $3.99) that duplicates the output from the ATR-35 to both the left and right channels (this sounds better, at least to my ears).
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42 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Astounding Clarity, December 17, 2006
This was the first mic I bought to go along with my Sony VX2100 Minidv camcorder!
The 20' cord was what attracted me first, and then the price, but when I played back some footage I was blown away with the professional sound that it produces! The quality to my ears seems equal to any interview I hear on television! It's that good!
I wear or place this about mid chest level and that seems about right, but it will pick up nicely even if placed further away. Its by far better than any camcorder mic! The 20' cord is great when your subject or yourself needs to move around to demonstrate something. Or to be stationary in a long shot!
I try intimate above, if your subject is sitting 5' to 6' from the camera lense in an interview position, this powerful little mic works equally as well. 1' or 20' makes no difference!
Bottom line; when I'm recording indoors I never use the on-board mic, I always reach for this and plug it in!
And to add stereo {rather second channel mono} to this just buy an adaptor at RS for $3. A mono to stereo adaptor.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Professional Quality at a fraction of the cost!!, May 14, 2007
I've been a professional television reporter/producer for four years, and I was astounded by the sound quality of this mic.
I bought it for a trip to Ethiopia to use with my personal camcorder, a 3CCD Panasonic. I was going for work, with a crew, but I wanted to shoot some travel videos of my own. On my last trip to South Africa I did the same, but the camera mic sounded lousy, especially compared to the pro-audio I was getting with the stories themselves.
That totally changed with this trip. The sound quality I have on my travel video standups with this $26 microphone is about 95% the quality I get from our professional gear. That runs $300 for a mic, $300 for the wireless transmitter, and $300 for the receiver. So $26 compared to $900+ is a fantastic deal.
The 20 feet of mic wire does get a bit tangled from time to time if you're using the mic on the run. But for the quality sound you get back from it, hassling with the wire is very much worth your while. And it's ideal if you're going to be doing sit down interviews or something where you have a stationary subject who isn't going anywhere. Keep in mind also, that the $900 wireless setup would involve strapping a receiver to my camcorder, which would be a bigger, bulkier hassle than the 20 foot cord.
My one and only issue is that there's no battery light. My camcorder does not allow me to monitor sound in the field, so if my battery dies or the mic is not turned on, I'd get no sound at all. If you can, record a mic check, play it back, and you're good to go. And keep an extra battery or two on hand. That way if the mic is accidentally left on and stored, you have an immediate backup.
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