Sound Advice: Living a Balanced Life (page 2)

Using balanced audio is a bit more trouble and includes some added expense, but the benefits are instantaneous and easily recognizable. You'll gain the ability to run long mike cables and the only noise in your recorded audio will be the birds singing in the trees. This gives you more flexibility during the shoot and less hassle during your edit session. Aside from better hours and more pay, what else could you want?

Balanced audio can be difficult to understand. So here's a graphical representation of how noise gets cancelled in a balanced cable. Start your favorite photo-editing program and open a picture with some detail. Change it to grayscale, then duplicate the image on another layer. Invert the colors of the copy - now you have a negative of the original image. Adjust the opacity of the inverted layer to 50%. The images completely cancel each other and you'll be left with a solid gray picture. That's exactly what happens to unwanted interference and noise when they attempt to invade a balanced audio connection.

In the world of video, it's common to combine a variety of balanced and unbalanced audio signals. The most flexible way to do this is with a full-featured audio mixer from a manufacturer like Behringer, Mackie or Yamaha. Many models are perfectly suited for the video producer who needs to use one device in multiple applications, so you can maximize your investment. Besides, the audio mixer you buy today will probably be the same one you are using ten years from now. Along the way, you'll also collect a wide variety of audio adapters and cables to interface the never-ending list of microphones, receivers, audio mixers and playback devices. There's only one rule: You can never have too many adapters.

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