sennheiser's AVX system really caught my eye at neb this year it promised to be a
reliable system for capturing quality audio particularly if you're a oneman
band kind of shooter but does it deliver on that promise let's find out oh yeah
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audio especially for beginners can be one of the most overlooked parts of
making videos but Pros know that even the best video with rubbish audio
provides an awful experience for the viewer so we've been using sennheiser's
G3 Wireless lavalier system for quite a while now and it's been great but comes
with a few minor inconveniences like the talent and the camera operator needing
to shout across the room to diagnose things like one of the packs being dead
the AVX by contrast is made with Simplicity in mind there are no settings
to tweak and it works mindlessly so that the operator can focus on making a good
video the AVX comes in a few different flavors depending on your needs our kit
included the AVX receiver a handheld mic transmitter the body pack transmitter
siser standard me2 lavalier and various accessories and cables physically the
AVX receiver is quite small compared to the Sennheiser G3 shedding most of the
bulk by using its own proprietary battery on the right side of the
receiver you will find three buttons AF out check SL power and pair as well as
LEDs that display battery information and pairing status on the left side of
the receiver we have the male 320° rotating XLR input which paired with
sennheiser's hot shoe accessory allows you to position the transmitter in the
ideal placement for your setup moving on to the body pack while the style is
quite different from the G3 your talent will feel right at home with a familiar
mute button on the top a mic input a digital display that shows connection
strength and battery life and on the left side of the unit we have the power
and pair buttons lastly we have the Sennheiser handheld transmitter which
comes standard with the md42 mic capsule the handheld transmitter Sports a
similar display to the body pack and has a power and pair button on the bottom of
the unit now I mentioned proprietary battery packs which would normally have
resulted in me ending the video right here declaring the AVX an utter failure
of a product but ciser is fortunately smarter than that and equipped each pack
with a micro USB power input so while you could purchase extra battery packs
for long shoots I'd recommend grabbing a cheap external battery bank and
strapping it to your rig with something like a bongo tie senzer claims 4 to 5
hours of battery life for the receiver and 11 hours for the transmitters which
seemed accurate based on my use of the AVX on Linus's latest personal rig
update 2015 which you can watch here and the receiver automatically detects
phantom power coming from a camera or audio recorder turning itself off if
phantom power is not detected to save your battery life a nice touch so let's
talk about what the AVX was actually like to use the pairing process is quite
painless I simply had to hold the pairing buttons for 3 seconds on both
the transmitter and the receiver I wanted to use and the audio was up in no
time once pairing was complete the units will connect to each other in a mere 5
seconds once powered on this is where I began to see the benefit of the avx's
Simplicity there have been times where we have fussed with the incorrect
Channel and gain configuration with our G3 kits things that contribute nothing
to the quality of our content and just waste time so instead of having the user
decide on a channel the ABX actively searches for the cleanest channel
available over a 1900 100 MHz band increasing signal strength or changing
channels on the fly at signs of interference range was surprisingly
solid even at a distance and through walls so I'm pretty impressed with the
range of the AVX currently I'm standing on our not finished b-roll set and Ed is
actually standing in Linus's office behind one of the Windows that's a fair
distance away and it's more than we would ever shoot in terms of distance
for using the AVX for audio pretty
impressive now the big question you might have for me at this point is how
does it sound well in my opinion quite good since we've been using the AVX for
this video since the beginning what surprised me most was how well
Sennheiser has implemented Auto gain control with even lonus being unable to
clip the audio in a significant way with all of his excited yelling Brandon what
is this doing here I don't know what you're talking about Brandon how many
times do I have to tell you stop leaving your cotton balls
everywhere and for those wondering how the handheld mic transmitter sounds have
a listen so here's an example of what the Sennheiser AVX handheld transmitter
sounds like I'm currently sitting in the new office warehouse where I'm testing
the mic going into a zoom H5 recorder so
in conclusion the AVX delivers on its promise of Simplicity while not
compromising on audio quality I see it being used by all the shooters in oneman
bang kinds of situations where they're doing everything from producing camera
and audio but also for those of you who are looking for an easy to use quality
audio solution however be prepared to pay a premium for the ease of use with
the price PR of the AVX coming in at almost 50% more than a standard G3 kit
with the same mic personally I plan on implementing the AVX when we do our show
coverage going forward speaking of going forward Mast drop has another one of
their killer deals on their site today the mionix Caster RGB it's currently
available over there for $67.99 and the Caster also features
their very solid 3310 sensor and some subtle RGB Lighting on the scroll wheel
and the back of the mouse of course this product is only available on Mast drop
at this discounted price thanks to their group bu model I essentially the more
people that buy the more the price goes down to a set minimum with its minimum
price being just under 30% below MSRP you can check out this drop and many
others at the link in the description at drawlin techtips so head over there now
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where we take a look at how much 4K resolution matters in a YouTube
workflow