wireless mic -- am I doing something wrong?

[spressman]

I've just purchased a wireless lapel mic (Radio Shack 170 MHz VHF single channel), and trying to use it with a Canon Optura Xi camcorder.

Receiver is plugged into the external mic jack on the camcorder, and all appropriate LED lights are on. But when I test it, no sound. Just wondering if I'm doing something wrong or if this setup simply won't do the job.

thanks,
steve

[Dave McElderry]

Sometimes it's more difficult to get the plug all the way into the jack than you would think. Is it possible that it's not all the way seated? Don't force anything, but check to make sure.

[Chuck Engels]

My wireless mic has two on/off switches, one on the receiver and one on the mic itself.
Make sure they are both on and that the receiver isn't on standby (the lights would be on but not the unit).

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

My wireless mic has multiple frequency settings so that one can avoid noisy channels. If yours has the same feature are the mic and receiver on the same frequency? Second thought, have you tried different batteries? I know that you mentioned that the LEDs were lit, just thought that if one of the batteries wasn't 100%...

[spressman]

I've fiddled with the settings, and also changed my camcorder audio setting from 12 bit to 16 bit. Something did the trick because it now seems to be working fine.

Thanks, as always, for the great advice!

steve

[Chuck Engels]

Glad you got it working Steve, too bad you don't know what the problem was though.
It's nice to have the solution just in case someone else has a similar problem in the future and they find this thread searching for an answer.

[spressman]

I did try to pinpoint the problem and the solution. Best I could come up with was that the external mic did not pick up any sound when I had the camera's audio volume level set to manual. When I switched to auto, external mic worked just fine.

steve

[Chuck Engels]

Thanks for the update Steve