the zoom H5 handy recorder has the ability to be able to accept a lavalier microphone right on the
side of the head here but did you know that with the appropriate adapters you can actually split
the recorder into a true four Channel lavalier microphone recorder in this video I'm going to
give you a quick overview of some of the ways in which you can do this also some of the gear that
you'll need to do it but especially some really good safety tips to stop you blowing The Living
Daylights out of these little lavalier microphones because if you don't choose the right functions
then that voltage will be so high that'll just cook these little fellows g'day my name is Gary
and on this channel you'll find videos to help just ease the pain of getting to know audio gear
and video gear and make life a little bit easier for you as a Creator just to quickly give you an
idea of how they function they're a little little condenser microphone and inside the the microphone
they have a little amplifier that amplifier has to be powered so that power comes from the device
that you've got it plugged into it could be your mobile phone or it could be your camera your DSLR
camera and the device will supply just enough voltage for that little amplifier to function
the voltage needed for these little condenser microphones is around 1.5 to 2 volts now that
this will vary depending on the brand but you can see it's only a very small amount of voltage
on the side here the side of the head there's a 3.5 millimeter input that you can connect
your lavalier microphone directly to there is another step that you need to take you
need to go into the settings of the H5 by just pressing the little menu button on the side here
you enter the menu and then use the little toggle on the side to actually go down to In and Out
plug-in power and I'm going to switch that plug-in power on which is 1.5 to 2 volts
go back to the main menu there we have it we've got some power now from that little lavalier
microphone so that's one thing you'll need to make sure it's switched on the plug-in power
now if you want to separate the stereo input into two different channels you'll
have to have an adapter now as you can see straight up the we've got a single
mono lavalier microphone but it's going across both the left and the right Channel
so how do we go about doing that well we know that the plug-in power is correct I'll just pull
this out and I'm going to use an adapter by Hoya now what I've done is I've I've put the link to
this particular adapter in the the description so that you can just check it out for yourself
for maybe a costing of it in your own area the there there may be some cheaper ones around and
and you're more than willing to try those but this particular one seems to be a really good
quality one and I've been really happy with it so to use the adapter you simply substitute the plug
for your microphone put it into there and now that has actually separated the stereo channel
into both a left and a right so depending on how you want to configure it you can just plug
in your microphones into there and let me just get this other microphone set up and plug him in
and now you should be able to see the two microphones functioning so
just for this exercise I'm going to just very gently rub this microphone
and you can see how on the right hand Channel That's indicating
and then on the left hand channel here
yep so it's it's functioning as well don't forget that this function has to be switched
on at the front here now as with any uh testing of microphones and setting them up with the right
gain you need to adjust this game here so that the level does not go past -12 now now that's just a
goal level uh some people say you go a little bit higher than that but in practice I've found that
-12 is a really good peak level this is a good recorder it has a very low noise floor so even
if you have to lift up the gain a little bit in post-production it still will be a nice clean
recording so that down gives you the ability to plug two microphones into that single stereo
Channel now what about using the XLR inputs that uh on the bottom of the H5 let's have a closer
look at that now the zoom H5 is set up with two XLR inputs on the bottom and that's designed to
accommodate any professional type microphones that you want to plug in and it also has the ability to
accept a what they call a 6.5 millimeter phono plug like a guitar lead or something like that
can plug into the center of it so it's very useful socket but you you do need to understand how this
socket can be configured because there are options in the menu to switch on what's called phantom
power let me just take you through those settings in the menu to make sure it's set up correctly
because as mentioned earlier these little lavalier microphones they only need 1.5 to 2 volts of power
but you know what this socket on the back here is designed so you can switch on phantom power
for the professional type microphones and that is actually 32 times greater voltage it's around
48 volts that they Supply to power those more professional microphones so let's go through
the the settings in the menu use the little menu button on the side here to enter the menu
and then select up in and out because it's an input that you're working on and you'll
notice down here where we were before we had a look at that plug-in power option and
we're going to have a look at this phantom power see inputs one slash two we select
that by pressing in the toggle button and it gives us the option of adjusting the voltage
to 12 24 or Plus 48. now I'm going to select plus 48 because that's when I do use a condenser
microphone that's the voltage I need but you see here you've got the option of on or off
the H5 gives you gives you the option of selecting all of the inputs that's both
of them or you can independently adjust each of them so let's say for instance we're looking at
input number one I'm going to select that and I'm going to switch the power for that input to off
and input 2 I'm going to switch that on so now we have the left hand input here which
is selected as off so it has no voltage at all and the Right End one has 48 volts uh supplied now why
have I selected 48 volts well it just so happens that I've got two different adapters to show you
one is a a standard XLR to 3.5 millimeter Jack and there's there's basically nothing inside
apart from cabling to connect those to different Jacks so you can imagine that any voltage that
comes through is going to just go from one end to the other now there's another adapter that you can
get this particular one's by Road it's called a x sorry A vxlr Plus and it has a little processor
inside like a little little electronic circuit and you can actually put 48 volts into the end of this
and then what comes out the other end is just plug-in power which is approximately 1.5 to 2
volts ideal for level ear microphones now in my opinion you can use both of these but I don't
know about you I like to have a little bit of a safety blanket these are quite cheap they're under
twenty dollars these ones here might be a little bit more than that I think they're around 60 or
70 dollars depending on where you're purchasing them from in the world but just seriously think
about getting one of these if you're going to plug an expensive lavalier microphone into your
H5 now it gives you a bit of a safety in the sense that if you mistakenly have the phantom
power switched on it's not going to cook you you know lavalier microphone that you might have spent
you know two or three hundred dollars on so now uh I had uh the second Channel hooked up with
phantom power I'm just gonna take that little turn that little clip loop around so with the
road adapter here it'll actually have 48 volts coming in one end it'll have the
1.5 to 2 volts coming out of the other now let me just plug in the little microphone
there we go we've got the little lavalier microphone plugged in now I'll go back
and I'm going to select Channel 2. and adjust the the channel level so let's
yeah that input is functioning fine it hasn't burned out or anything terrible which is nice
now let's have a look at using this standard adapter which it doesn't have any attenuation
for voltage or anything in it it's just a straight through adapter it does allow you to plug an XLR
into the bottom of the H5 and adapt it to a 3.5 millimeter Jack but again I've got to warn you
that there's no protections with this one so you have to be very very careful when you set it up
so this is input number one and I'm going to select the menu option and in out and we're
going back to the phantom power on off and this is input number one at the moment it says it's off
now we've double checked that this particular input number one has the voltage Switched Off
and we've plugged in the lavalier microphone plus we're using a lavalier microphone that has
its own power supply because we're not adapting it from phantom power 48 volts we're just using
this little powered lavalier microphone and I'm just I'm going to make sure that I select the
Left End that's the number one channel and we have the microphone functioning there we are so just to
show you what I mean by a self-powered lavalier microphone that has a little switch on the side
so I'm going to turn that off and now there's no power running to the lavalier microphone
and you can see there's no input level plugging in lavalier microphones to your Zoom H5 is not really
a problem if you've got the appropriate adapters so to separate the stereo input on the side of
the head here into two inputs you'll need one of those Square adapters that's a 3.5 millimeter two
separated two channel inputs that way you can plug two microphones in if you're going to use
the XLR inputs on the bottom it's a little bit more complex but you do need to be aware that
the voltage output of these is way higher than you need so if you want to do the use the best
option get one of these vxlr plus adapters they will actually reduce your 48 volt phantom power
down to the appropriate plug-in power if you can only afford one of these little adapters which is
a standard XLR to 3.5 adapter which has just got it's connecting cables inside you will need to use
one of these leveling microphones that has its own little onboard battery so it's self-powered
and be aware you need to go into the menu and switch off the phantom power to the channel
that you're using or you'll end up cooking the little Circuit of those sensitive microphones
I've left links in the description for all of these items that you see in front of you here
if you've got any questions please leave them in the comment section I love reading them I'll
get back to you as soon as I as soon as I possibly can on those until next time I'll catch you later