Best Sound Kit for a Sony Camera

[LensMeAHand]

As a camera person, the last thing I want to do is to fuss with sound. Unfortunately, we’re sometimes stuck doing it alongside our camera duties on really low-budget interviews.

However, Sony makes a sound kit that integrates with Sony cameras, making our lives a little easier. Since the receiver connects via the hotshoe mount, you have one less cable getting in your way.

The Sony UWP-D11 package (URX-P03 receiver and UTX-B03 transmitter) on a Sony a1

The audio quality is great, and setup is fairly simple (see last paragraph). There’s a newer model (The URX-P40 receiver and UTX-B40 transmitter) that I haven’t used, but you should be aware that the new and old models are compatible with slightly different lists of cameras.

New model compatibility (scroll to Overview section)

Old model compatibility (scroll to Overview section)

The biggest downside of the old model (I’m not sure if this is an issue on the new one) is the fact that the audio level can only be adjusted from the transmitter, which means you need to pull it off the talent’s waistband to make adjustments. 

Other than that, it's a great little kit which I highly recommend!

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I thought I'd also include some helpful hints for the old model (URX-P03 & URX-T03):

To set the audio levels on the transmitter, you'll need to navigate through the menu by pressing the +/- buttons until you reach the ATT option. This is the attenuator setting and will allow you to adjust the level.

To scan frequencies and sync receiver to transmitter, you'll need to navigate through the receiver's menu by pressing the +/- buttons until you reach the AUTO SET screen. Hold the SET button until the screen says YES. Then press the SET button again. The receiver will scan through all available channels and find the one with the least interference. When it finishes, the screen will display SYNC with a moving arrow. At this point, you’ll need to turn the transmitter on and place the receiver and transmitter next to each other, with their infrared ports facing each other. Select YES on the transmitter and they'll be synced and ready to go!

[alisterchapman]

I've been using the UWP-D's for years and they have proven to be amazingly reliable.

 

One thing that is often overlooked with many of the cheaper radio mics that use the 2.4Ghz wifi band is the latency. The lower cost mics often have a delay of between 19ms and 60ms. This can cause big issues if you try to mix one of the digital mics with a wired microphone or the cameras internal mic as you will have an echo or worse still phase issues that cause all sorts of weirdness such as very thin sounding audio. If the audio tracks are all recorded independently this can be resolved in post production, but it's extra work and extra steps.

The UWP-D mics have extremely low latency, so mixing them with wired mics or the internal mic is not an issue.