Can't get hiss free audio through the camera

Tramontane

I have the D3300 and it's a great camera. I mostly use it for video and no complaints there. Video is always clear, crisp and looks great. My main issue is audio. I don't use the built in mic but instead use a matched pair of Sennheiser e614 condenser mics (phantom powered). These first go into a Behringer QX1202USB mixer and from there I have leads going out to the camera's external mic input.

The audio is recording pretty well however there is a very noticeable hiss which I cannot seem to get rid of.

At first I thought the mics were picking up room noise but everything in the room is turned off. Also comparing to recordings made with the mics going into the mixer and then out to a DAW instead of into the camera there is no background hiss on those.

So this leads me to believe there is something about the way the audio is being recorded into the camera. I have tried different mics but there is no change. I have also tried manually setting the mic sensitivity which helped a little but that hiss is still there.

I could of course go back to recording through the mixer straight into the DAW on the computer but it is so much more convenient to record the audio on the camera for when it comes time to edit the video.

I wondered if anyone here had any suggestions as I have run out of ideas?

Thanks.

Sol

bruto

My experience here is very limited, but have you changed the audio settings (in the movie settings menu)? If it's set to auto, the volume will always be cranked up to max when there's no signal, and that might increase hiss.

Tramontane

Yeah I figured out that the audio was set to auto so I have now manually set it to +1 and increased the gain at the mixer end instead. That seems to have sorted it. Doesn't completely remove all the noise but you would need to have the listening device volume cranked to max to hear the hiss so it is miles better than it was.

Wish I had realised this before because I now have 5 videos reviews done which I cannot use. Tried removing the hiss through Final Cut Pro but as I have a mix of narration and music it is problematic to say the least. Still, we live and learn ;)

bruto

thanks for the feedback. Getting rid of hiss is a real problem once it's in the recording, especially if there's music, since you can't just cut the treble out, and there's no tone setting by which you could raise the treble and cut it in post (poor man's dolby).