Topic: Sony A10 question

[in2blues]

I really love my Sony A10. The blue tooth is nice because you can set levels from iPhone.
The issue I have is in a loud room with mics plugged in with Battery Box the levels are to high even when set to 1. With the built in mics. I can lower levels but get better sound with externals.
 Does the deck have a setting to help with loud rooms, I haven't found one?  Thanks for any help

[beatkilla]

There are 2 settings for the input jack.....MIC IN and AUDIO IN.


You need to use AUDIO IN.

[roffels]

There are 2 settings for the input jack.....MIC IN and AUDIO IN.


You need to use AUDIO IN.

I want to caution that this depends on both the microphones used and the volume of music. I've taken the "use audio in" advice as gospel and have had some really high-noise floor hissy recordings when taking that advice, where I need to have the volume levels all the way up to get a usable but hissy recording.

[loughney]

There are 2 settings for the input jack.....MIC IN and AUDIO IN.


You need to use AUDIO IN.

I want to caution that this depends on both the microphones used and the volume of music. I've taken the "use audio in" advice as gospel and have had some really high-noise floor hissy recordings when taking that advice, where I need to have the volume levels all the way up to get a usable but hissy recording.

All depends on what mics you are using. The Sony A10 doesn't have the best electronics for amplification, so you might want to use an external battery box.  I did find that I needed to get the low sensitivity mod for the SP-CMC-4U mics, because I had a lot of problems with recordings that were too loud.

[roffels]

There are 2 settings for the input jack.....MIC IN and AUDIO IN.


You need to use AUDIO IN.

I want to caution that this depends on both the microphones used and the volume of music. I've taken the "use audio in" advice as gospel and have had some really high-noise floor hissy recordings when taking that advice, where I need to have the volume levels all the way up to get a usable but hissy recording.

All depends on what mics you are using. The Sony A10 doesn't have the best electronics for amplification, so you might want to use an external battery box.  I did find that I needed to get the low sensitivity mod for the SP-CMC-4U mics, because I had a lot of problems with recordings that were too loud.

This was with an external battery box and Church Audio CA-14s (cards and omnis) along with powered Nak cm-300s. mic-in is the way to go with those, in my experience.

[in2blues]

Thanks for all the replies. I was using an external church battery box with CA- 11's, It was a fairly quiet show and levels were almost peaked. Any louder a show and it would have been distorted. Will try Audio in but worried about getting hissy recording? Sounds like as long as I don't have to turn levels real high to get good levels it should come out okay?  Thanks for the help, everyone is very helpful. Without this site I would be wandering around blind.

[Gutbucket]

That is correct. 

The simple take on this is to:
Use the Audio-In setting for recording anything loud - where use of Mic-in will not allow you to set the input trim on the A10 low enough to comfortably avoid overload/clipping.
Use Mic-in for recording anything quiet - where use of Audio-in would require you to set the input trim on the A10 overly high, to avoid increasing noise.

[Ozpeter]

(This probably should be discussed in the existing thread - https://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=192371.510 - certainly anything else pertaining to this device should be in there, rather than added here.  Maybe.  Perhaps.  If you agree....)

[jbell]

I would also suggest a quality preamp that has lots of clean gain!  I've been running a DPA MMA 6000> PCM-A10 with great results.  I haven't taped any quiet shows, but wouldn't be worried about it if I did.  I love the ability to control the A10 with my phone, such a nice feature.