02Jun Saramonic SR-AX107 Review
I’ve been using the Saramonic SR-AX107 for the last two months off and on for various things. As far as XLR audio adapters go, it sounds good. In fact you’d be hard pressed to find a major difference in audio quality between the SR-AX107 and something like the Beachtek DXA-SLR XLR audio adapter.
While the Saramonic SR-AX107 does provide a little more gain (20db vs 16db on a beachtek) and offers up a few more features like backlit level meters, cold shoe mounting points, peaking, and AGC disable for older cameras, but the real benefit of the SR-AX107 is the price. At $199 and $169 for it’s very similar brother the SR-AX104, Saramonic’s offerings are $100 or so less then the nearest competitors.
On the down side, the Saramonic SR-AX107 is very large compared to any of it’s competition. So the trade off here, is really price vs size. If you want to save some money and don’t mind dealing with a larger XLR audio adapter the SR-AX107 or SR-AX104 is a good choice. If size is important, you might want to spend the extra on something smaller.
I know a lot of you will probably ask “Why not use a field recorder?” and while I could try and write out all of my thoughts on the pros and cons of field recorders vs XLR audio adapters, I think Devin and I did a pretty good job of covering it on the last podcast.
In short use an XLR audio adapter if you don’t have a sound guy and are working with limited resources, use a field recorder when you have the time or sound guy to handle it. Alternatively hybrid units like the Tascam DR-60D and Tascam DR-70D might be a better compromise for both field recording and camera adapters. Still haven’t had a chance to play with the DR-70D but it’s on my list.
All in all, I think the Saramonic SR-AX107 is well priced for what it offers and it’s a great budget XLR audio adapter if you don’t mind the size. Hopefully they’ll continue to improve on the design in future models.
