Microphone preamps

Rich Harrington: So we have established that you can get good audio by using an external mic like…a Shotgun--okay, audio--barely passable audio using the built-in for reference purposes.…But sometimes you want to plug in external mics.…Now we're going to explore different mic types on an upcoming episode, but today let's talk about pre-amps.…The idea of getting audio from an external mic right into the camera.…Robbie Carman: Yeah, and I'd actually even throw in the idea, not just of a pre-amp, but also of a dedicated mixer itself.…Now you can see here I have a little portable field mixer by Sound Devices.…

And this guy is kind of neat, because I can plug in XLR, I can plug in a whole bunch of…different things, I can control my level directly on it.…Rich: Runs out on battery power so you're portable.…Robbie: Right, and the beauty about this is that I can plug in professional level condenser…mics, dynamic mics, whatever it may be, and I can actually feed this signal directly to my camera.…And this is essentially what a mixer or a pre-amp does.…