Saramonic SR-AX101 and SR-AX107 Audio Adapters

Are you recording audio directly to your DSLR?

Then you're dealing with these issues:

• You can't use microphones with XLR connectors. That leaves out hundreds of high quality professional microphones and limits you to mics with a 3.5mm connection.
• You can't use more than one mic at a time, no backup and no way to get good audio with two people.
• Even if you have manual level control for audio, you can't set audio level independently for each mic.
• You may not have audio meters or headphone output, so you have no way to monitor the sound level and make sure you get a good recording.
• You may be stuck with auto gain control on your camera that ruins any chance of getting a good recording.

You can solve these problems, and improve the production value of your video, with one of these audio adapters.

I tested these audio adapters with three microphones – a Sennheiser EW100 G2 wireless lavalier, a Shure Beta 58A and a RØDE NT3. All tracks were recorded directly to a Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera. The clips were normalized to -3db, I added no EQ, and no noise reduction or other post processing was done on the audio.

I was most impressed with the SR AX-107 as the sound quality was significantly improved. It also has heaphone output with its own volume control, meters and peak indicators for each channel, and separate mic/line switches and volume control for each channel.

If your camera has an auto gain control (AGC) that can't be turned off, the AX107 can send a signal to the right channel to defeat this nasty "feature" and give you decent audio. And, if your camera has audio out, you can feed that back into the AX107 and monitor it with the flip of a switch.

For the price, both of these are worth checking out. Here are links for all equipment used in this review:

[NOTE: these are affiliate links and I will likely make a commission on any equipment you purchase through them – thank you for clicking and supporting this site!]