Levels · Mic Placement · Room Tone
Press Play sound to listen (headphones help). The meters work with the sound off.
Everyone freezes, nobody talks, the camera can keep rolling. The editor uses this to fill gaps between lines so the background never drops out.
A teaching model, not a calibrated recorder. Speech averages 70 dB SPL at 1 ft (peaks 10 dB higher, a shout 18 dB higher) and loses 6 dB per doubling of distance (inverse square, free field; real rooms add reflections, so far-away falloff is a little gentler). Room noise is diffuse and constant: the shotgun rejects about 8 dB of it, the on-camera mic 4 dB, the lav none. S/N compares average speech to room noise plus recorder hiss (−80 dBFS, camera input −70). Limiter: −3 dBFS threshold, 20:1, handles up to 12 dB of overload.