right let me tell you where this one starts this is one of the cameras I use to shoot these videos
and it's the only camera that I've got that has a headphone output the only problem is that the mic
input on it has broken which means I can no longer use my lavalier mic with it it does however have
another input that can accept sound that's the hot shoe or as Sony calls it the multi-interface shoe
so that got me wondering is there a way to plug a lav mic into that and that's how I stumbled across
this it's a bluetooth transmitter and receiver set for use on Sony cameras that have that
multi-interface shoe and it will let you plug a lavalier mic into the transmitter now just putting
aside my specific use case for a moment I'm going to review this as a normal bluetooth mic and then
we can circle back around to testing it out for my requirements later on so inside the box other
than the paperwork of which there's quite a bit there's a carrying case two earphones an earphone
hanger or clip the mic and receiver unit and then there's an armband and a windscreen for that mic
now if we look at the receiver unit first that's the bit that goes on the camera
there's an on off switch and that also selects various modes there's an earphone socket on here
as well and a volume control for that earphone and an indicator light and of course the multi
interface connector on the bottom meanwhile over on the microphone transmitter unit there's another
earphone output and again there's a volume control for that earphone as well as a power switch
on the top are the holes for the built-in mic as well as a socket for an external mic
and another indicator light and the whole thing is powered by one
AAA battery the receiver in the hot shoe is powered by the camera itself
and once it's switched on it overrides the built-in microphones that are on the camera
to only receive the audio from the bluetooth mic instead so I think it's time for a demo
right now first off I'm going to try the Sony bluetooth mic on its own
there's a bit of a breeze though I'll hear it coming across the microphone
I think I best put the wind muff on it's in one of these pockets here somewhere
there we go so just give me a minute I'll put that on the top I've just realised now that's on there
I can't see the blue LED anymore so when putting it in you could accidentally switch it off but
I double checked I'm pretty sure it's on so let's see how far we can get with this so I know in the
house it didn't get that far I only put it in the other room and it started to cut out it's supposed
to be 300 feet so I mean I haven't brought a tape measure with me I don't think you could get a
300 foot one that could fit my pocket but I think this is far enough that most people want to shoot
I mean I'm sure I'm kind of a dot on the horizon by this point so hopefully you can hear me there
um what I'm gonna do I'm gonna plug my normal lavalier in so you can compare the sound quality
okay so now we're recording through my usual lav mic it's a Boya BY M1 they only cost like 15 quid
or something it's not a posh one I just like the sound of it but I'm going to keep coming towards
the camera now just in case this is cutting out a bit hopefully it's a little bit better here we are
in a nice open space here so the bluetooth should be traveling this far but you never know dear I
mean that's the thing that's why the guy at that end has the little earpiece he's able to listen in
to what's coming from this end just to check the recording's working so it's a good idea having
a little earpiece on it as well as far as I'm concerned anyway all right so I've just had a look
back at that footage and I was surprised how well it worked it didn't break up at all so now I want
to see how far I can get so I'm going to try and get right over to that corner over there and while
I do that I'll just mention that we're back on the microphone itself now the Sony mic I've unplugged
the lavalier so this is just the kit and I wanted to mention behind you there is a very noisy road
of course the more I go this way it'll get quieter as far as that's concerned but yeah it's not a
great place for trying to demonstrate how much background noise there is on this because there's
loads in the place anyway another thing I should mention if it's still picking me up is that this
thing has auto gain control so as soon as you plug that thing on top of the microphone you
can't adjust the recording level anymore it's out of your hands so that's something to verify
but then again it does make it quite easy to use I mean just plug it in plug this in at the other end
switch it on and you're sorted you can get a bit further over here
tomorrow just gonna get through this part so let's keep going
am I still on microphone oh I've set a dog off I don't know if I'm supposed to be here I think
we'll call it quits at this point shall we because I'm very good oh there he is hello dog oh yeah
he's he's not happy is he all right all right I'm off I'm off nice looking dog though
I'll take a picture, can I take a picture?
okay oh he’s shy I wanted to show you what the dog looked like because you won’t see it from there
but uh yeah anyway there you go that's a test free dog included as well so hey what do you expect
pulling out all the stops here wildlife traffic a little bit of sun and a test of a microphone that
has been superseded in fact let me tell you about the superseding of this mic because it's
kind of out of date now yeah so this is an older product it's been out a while you can tell from
the illustrations on the box that depict someone using this with a Sony camcorder the box seems
to have been designed sometime around 2014 but the instructions inside date the device back to
2013. now of course the one I've got was made more recently than that but I just wanted to mention
that this product has been on the market for quite some time coincidentally just after I bought this
one there was a leak online of the replacement for this the new ECM W2BT that's due to be announced
any day now it might already be out by the time you watch this video the newer one uses bluetooth
5 whereas my models on bluetooth 3 and rather than using a AAA battery for the transmitter
it's rechargeable but one thing that's missing on that newer model are those earphone sockets which
leads on to the question of why does my model have them at both ends and what exactly do you
need them for so back to the baldy in the car park now we've all seen bluetooth microphones before
but this one has a feature that I haven't seen on other devices and it's two-way communication
as well as the audio from the microphone at the remote end being picked up by the camera
I can also transmit audio from this end back to the person on the microphone so you could for
example give some kind of directions to them you know some instructions to the talent for example
yeah can you just move to the left a bit sorry what's that you want me to move to
the left yeah you're not in the centre you just just need to move a bit okay no problem
no your left oh sorry
or you could perhaps use this for socially distanced interviews although of course the person
at the other end's going to have a earpiece in I suppose they could take it out before answering
the question so you could say something like can you tell me a little bit more about when you first
realised that you couldn't act I'm pretty sure it's about the same time that you realise the same
thing so just to clarify a couple of things here the person at the end with the camera if they want
to monitor what is being recorded they've got to listen through that earpiece also if they want to
talk to the other end they have to do it through this little microphone on the back of the device
because once that's plugged in it deactivates the mics that are built into the camera and just to be
extra clear this earphone can hear this mic and this earphone can hear this mic or a mic that's
plugged into this device but that's it that's all those earphones can listen to nothing else so for
example with this camera if I play back a video on that screen something I've recorded earlier
the audio from that just comes out of the camera's built-in speaker as normal it doesn't transfer up
to that earphone output and similarly the earphone can't monitor anything that's been recorded over
the camera's built-in microphone input so for the purposes of this device it's best to think of that
multi-interface shoe as a mic input rather than a headphone output it can send audio into the camera
but it can't get any audio out of the camera for you to listen to through that earphone now moving
back to things you can do it is possible to record a mix of both the mics the bluetooth one and the
one that's in the hot shoe this is selected with the switch on the side of that receiver unit
there's an off at the bottom but the next one up is single and this is the one that you select if
you only want to record the audio that's coming from the bluetooth transmitter the next one up
is mono however on the right notice it mentions mix that's because that's the one that mixes
the audio from the remote end and the audio that's picked up by the mic in the hot shoe
the final setting 5.1 is not compatible with this camera I thought we should demonstrate the
results of mixing the mics so I played some music on my phone and then sealed that in a box with the
bluetooth microphone and then I use the camera to record a video whilst talking into the microphone
that's on the back of the receiver unit and here's what it sounded like okay so what we should be
getting now is the sound of my voice that's been recorded by the unit that's attached to the camera
as well as the audio from the bluetooth end that's inside the plastic box
yeah so the mic on the receiver unit isn't great and you can't control the
mix level so I’d imagine most people would prefer to leave it switched off
but now one thing I have noticed is that this setup has quite a high noise floor
background hiss so let's do a demo of that I recorded some video in a totally quiet room
you'll hear three different recordings first from the camera's built-in mics second from the camera
with the bluetooth receiver attached but the mic turned off and then finally you'll hear the audio
with the bluetooth mic turned on these tests will be more effective when listened through
headphones and remember there really should be no sound at all or very little I've
started off by turning the built-in microphones sensitivity on the camera up to 20. so here we go
yeah so there's quite a noticeable amount of background noise there so much so that you'd
probably want to try and filter it out in editing if you could it's caused by two things first
there's a bit of an electronic type background buzz but on top of that you've also got this auto
gain which if things are quiet it'll try and boost up the recording level which then introduces hiss
now if you cast your mind back to the beginning of this video you'll recall that the reason I started
on this is because I wanted to use this lavalier mic with this camera that currently has a broken
mic input so did that work well it kind of works I mean you can hear me at the moment the
mic that I've got on here is plugged into the transmitter which is being picked up
by the bluetooth receiver which is going into the camera the trouble is it's coming in too
hot and because it uses auto gain control there's no manual override I can't adjust the levels down
so as far as the original idea goes not really a goer for me I suppose you could experiment with
different microphones and things but I'll just use different cameras for the time being until
I can find a suitable replacement for this one but as far as the bluetooth aspect goes
if I take away the lavalier it's working fine for that so I could definitely use it as a bluetooth
microphone in the future if I ever find the need so it's not a complete waste of time but it just
doesn't resolve the issue that I started off with I suppose I could get the camera repaired
but I think it's time for a replacement this year anyway I’d really like 4K60 yeah well it
might not be a substitute for a broken mic socket it does what it was designed to do reasonably well
in an open space you can get a lot further away from the camera than you could with a wired lav
mic and from the camera's end you can monitor the audio that's coming in with the earphone to check
that it's nice and clear and not breaking up even on cameras that have no built-in headphone jack
for some the two-way communication feature might come in handy not so much for me though as I tend
to work on my own I suppose the biggest downsides are the auto gain and the background hiss not too
much of an issue when you're outside with plenty of background noise but definitely
of a concern in quiet environments and for that reason it might well be worth seeking
out the updated model I assume they've worked on addressing the hiss problems and the new one also
has an attenuation switch which should mean better compatibility with different lavalier mics but the
absence of an earphone output means that unless your camera has a headphone out you're not going
to be able to monitor what's going on at the remote end so it could be dropping out you'll
only find out when you listen back to it on your camera's built-in speaker it's kind of ironic that
the publicity shot shows it's being used on a ZV1 that's a camera that would suffer from that exact
problem so if you did want the model with the earphone out well you'll need to find the old one
which no doubt is going to disappear quite soon you'll find some overly optimistic ebay links
in the video description but anyway that's it for the moment as always thanks for watching