juicedLink: Tutorials - juicedLink Setup

There is a mounting screw for attaching to the bottom of camcorders. It has been offset to the right hand side, so the juicedLinks fit well with your hand in the hand strap of today’s very small camcorders.

Also, many of the smaller camcorders do not have a hole for the azimuth pin. On the juicedLinks, the azimuth pin can simply be unscrewed.

The juciedLinks can also be mounted on top of a tripod.

There are also some handy instructions that are silk-screened on to the bottom of the unit.

Here’s where features are located. The 9V battery tray is on the side of the unit. The on/off switch is also accompanied by a power LED, and a low-battery LED. The inputs are XLR balanced receivers, which can also be used with unbalanced sources, such as the receivers for wireless microphones. The stereo minijack output is on the rear. The cable (included) plugs into the juicedLink output, and the other end plugs into the microphone input on the camcorder. The bottom has mic/line switches for the first 2 channels. Each channel has its own individual gain, trim, and pan control. Models with phantom power can select between 12V or 48V, and routed individually to the appropriate XLR channel.

Once the juicedLink is mounted to your camcorder, you can plug the cable into the output of the juicedLink, and the other end into the microphone input of the camcorder.

Make sure that the camcorder’s input attenuator is off, which is usually the default setting.

Plug the microphone into the juicedLink XLR input. Make sure that the mic/line switch is set to mic. If you’re powering a condenser microphone, then select the appropriate voltage and route it to the XLR input channel. Microphones that run off of 12V will increase your battery life.

Many camcorders will have a couple of modes of operation. One is AGC or automatic, where the camcorder will automatically increase or decrease the gain of its amplifiers depending on the level of the input signal. Then there is the manual setting, where you control the camcorder's amplifier gain.

For any channels that don’t have an input connected to them, make sure that you turn the trim control down all of the way. Preamplifiers that don’t have an input impedance connected to them will produce noise, so you want to turn the trim down all of the way on channels that don’t have an input connected so that noise does not go to the output.

To set the levels, I will usually start at high gain, and then turn the trim up to get the signal to a level that sounds (or meters) good. Audio potentiometers are on a logarithmic scale. So, when it’s near full counter clockwise, a small change in the potentiometer results in a big change in volume. The sweet spot where you have finer granularity is around 12 o’clock and beyond. If the gain is so high that you can’t get the potentiometer in the sweet spot, where you have finer granularity control, then I’ll turn the gain switch down a notch.

First make sure that your camcorder’s attenuator is off. Then, you’ll have to decide if you are going to run your camcorder in AGC mode, or manual mode. If you’re in an environment where the signal level can vary greatly and unpredictably, then use the camcorder in AGC mode. It gives you a really wide band that protects you from overload. But, when you’re trying to record fine audio detail and you’re trying to get the lowest noise performance of your system, you’re better off using the manual mode. So, you can manually set the camcorder gain to roughly 1/3 level (you’ll have to experiment with your camcorder), and pump up the gain on the juicedLink. Camcorder amplifiers are very noisy, especially at high gain. So, when you throttle back the noisy camcorder amplifiers, and let the low-noise preamplifiers of the juicedLink do the heavy lifting, you end up with an overall improved system signal-to-noise level.

Then, as far what to set the levels to, my opinion is that headphones are a must, and meters are a convenience. Meters don’t tell you anything about signal-to-noise. You could have the levels set to the right level, but your audio sounds like crap. You could have tons of background noise, echo, a microphone could be crapping out on you and noisy … and the meters would never tell you this. Many camcorders already have built in meters. Check their user manual for setting to the appropriate levels. Typically, they’ll want you to set things to about –12FS (Full Scale). There are juicedLink units with meters as well. The juicedLink meters need to be calibrated to your camcorder meters, and they’ll need to be re-calibrated every time you change your settings on your camcorder.