Improve Video Sound with a Sennheiser MKE400

Use this Hot-shoe mounted Microphone to Upgrade your Camcorder Sound

Aug 12, 2008

Camcorder microphones generally deliver poor sound quality, which can be improved using an external microphone.

One of the biggest improvements that can be made to the sound captured by camcorders is using an external microphone. In general, the microphone should be closer to the sound source than the video camera, but for many consumer applications this is impractical. The Sennheiser MKE 400 microphone is designed to improve the situation with more directionality and less camera-borne noise.

Sennheiser are an established microphone manufacturer, and the MKE400 retailing at about €150 / £120 is at the budget end of their range. It is designed for the consumer camcorder user who would like better sound quality from their camcorder, and this product is well designed to deliver that.

Overview

The MKE400 is small, which helps greatly with family video and the like where the subjects may not be used to being on camera and where a larger microphone would make the camera loom large and induce camera-shyness. The camcorder must, of course, have a 3.5mm jack microphone input, and the MKE 400 is wired to this. It is a mono microphone which a sound pickup which is targeted strongly to sounds coming from the front. This is exactly what is needed most of the time – the camera will normally be aimed towards the source of interesting sounds. And this is what the MKE400 is designed to do, with its hypercardioid (shotgun) directional response. The microphone has a solid feeling metal body, and is powered by a single AAA cell in the base. A curly lead terminated in a stereo 3.5mm jack takes the signal to the camcorder – though the microphone is mone the signal is presented on both the left and right hand channels of the plug which puts it at the centre of the screen on playback, which is just where it should be. For dialogue, a good mono signal trumps a phasey stereo signal with too much ambience which is what most camcorder microphones tend to pick up – they marry a wide-angled soundfield to a lens that has much more telephoto perspective available than wide-angle in its zoom range.

Features

Despite the fact that MiniDV can record excellent quality stereo sound, many consumer camcorders use AGC which is not particularly good, and here Sennheiser have come to the aid again, with some very useful features. One is a selectable gain switch, which can boost the gain by 6dB for more distant dialogue. This helps reduce the AGC pumping on medium close-ups while still being usable on dialogue when the camcorder is further away taking full shots. Another feature is the optional low-frequency cut at about 300 Hz. This can help when the wind is up – the MKE400 is supplied with a foam windshield but this is only really good if the wind is below 5mph otherwise some wind noise becomes noticeable. Highly directional mics are inherently more susceptible to wind noise than omnidirectional mics. With the low-frequency cut wind noise is much less obtrusive than without, while retaining the frequencies needed to reproduce dialogue well.

The microphone base has an integrated shock mount which works very well to decouple low-frequency handling noise from getting into the audio path – the MKE400 is much better in this respect than the pervious MKE300. Of course, the quality-seeking video recordists has their camcorder on a tripod when handling noise is therefore irrelevant, but the sad fact is that many people handhold their camcorders, and the shockmount helps them get better sound marred by fewer fumbling noises.

Conclusion

Sennheiser’s MKE 400 is a worth successor to their budget MKE 300 video microphone, with a much smaller size, stereo presentation and selectable gain and LF cut. It does not have the clarity of the company’s ME 66 or the expensive MKH60, but is a vast improvement of the typical inbuilt camcorder microphone. A very good investment, which will make consumer family video recordings a lot easier to follow!

It is possible to nit-pick - the MKE400 could be more sensitive, and something like the ME66 will be less noisy with faint signals. the tone colour, particularly indoors, is more coloured than more expensive microphones. Professional users will demand greater transparency, but they are not the target market. It is a good product for its target market of consumer camcorder users.

The copyright of the article Improve Video Sound with a Sennheiser MKE400 in Video Cameras is owned by Richard Mudhar. Permission to republish Improve Video Sound with a Sennheiser MKE400 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.