Blackmagic Forum

Any opinions on plugging a mic directly into the URSA Mini Pro as opposed to using a ZOOM recorder? I have no sound gear of my own so I'm renting out the mic and I'm just wondering if anyone thinks that there are drawbacks for using the XLR cables and phantom power instead of using a ZOOM to record sound.

Strange compare.... why not wireless microphones with your camera it does have XLR....
are the pre-amps of that camera no good ? otherwise use the camera sound as refference sound for sync with the the recordings of a better than Zoom recorder, look for a recorder with analog pre-amps so you won't have clipping/distortion with too loud peaks.
The camera has (too) loud fan(s) ? using the onboard pre-amps saves sync work flow in post obviously.

The UM Pro has good onboard mic preamps and excellent line level amps. I second using wireless lags for u terviews, but wired lavs a,so work, and the camera can provide phantom power. It’s also quality is as good or better than a Zoom.

Add a digital microeconomics like rhe Sound Devices MixPreD, and you can take the AES outout from the mixer and connect to the camera, and get excellent results. Two channels of audio are carried from the MixPre D to the camera in one AES cable.

You can also assign one XLR for AES, mix down the two channels in the MixPre D to one channel, feed it to left or right XLR on the camera, and feed a third mic into the other xlr input, from say, a high quality audio recorder or wireless mic receiver.
Cheers