I don’t normally do two videos in one day, but I received so many request for a test using a lavalier with the Bluetooth transmitter setup that I decided to give it a try. It hadn’t accrued to me that this could be used as a lavalier setup since most of my plans focused around the stereo audio side of things.

All of the Lavalier microphones I own require power to run. So I talked to Scott over at the Frugal Film Maker blog and he recommended a quick and dirty $22 radio shack tie-clip microphone (mine was on clearance). After picking one up I cobbled together a couple of audio tests.

The first test is the Radio shack Lavalier plugged into a mono to stereo converter then into the Fiio E5 Headphone amplifier and finally into the stereo Bluetooth transmitter. The results are poor. There is a lot of noise in the audio and I wouldn’t consider it to be very usable.

The second test is the Radio shack Lavalier plugged into a mono to stereo converter then into my Zoom H1’s microphone input and finally the Zoom H1’s audio output into the stereo Bluetooth transmitter. The results are much better then the first test but still not as clean as the test results from the earlier Rode VideoMic test.

I’m not 100% sure what is causing the problem. But I have two things I’m going to look into. The first is the transmitter, since the first one showed up defective, I’m wondering if its replacement is also starting to defect. I did choose the lowest of the low Bluetooth transmitters. The second is the Radio Shack microphone that I picked up on clearance. This could be a lesson in “you get what you pay for”.

Unfortunately my wonderful neighbor spent half the day testing the glass packs on his 1970s era bronco and I was unable to get enough quiet time to sort out the problem.

You might want to spend 5 or 6 extra dollars on the branded Bluetooth models on amazon, as apposed to the lowest common denominator from china on ebay. When I get a chance I’ll sit down with my Zoom H1 and Zoom H4N and figure out if it’s the microphone or the transmitter that is causing the problem. Until then The Saga Continues.


 

Tags: , ,