Connect Two Mics to Your DSLR

Posted December 04, 2017

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Have you ever wanted to connect multiple microphones to your DSLR or other non-XLR input camera? Well there's a pretty easy way you can do that just with a $5 cable.

Capturing clean audio is one of the most important aspects of video production. Audio is what immerses someone in the world that you are capturing in video. There's an old saying in video that most of what you see, is what you hear, and it is very true. Viewers will be forgiving of a little shaky footage or bad framing, but once the audio is even slightly bad, they will turn off without a second thought.

Capturing clean audio can be a difficult challenge when you are working with a DSLR or a camera without an XLR audio input -- this is also true of smartphones, but we have a few ways to get around it we've covered before. The internal microphones on most DLSR cameras are pretty bad and often are so close to the camera recording mechanism that you often end up with a little buzz from the camera in your video. That's why you'll want to use an external mic to get clean audio (either a shotgun or a radio mic). Most DSLRs have one microphone input, so what if you want to connect two mics?

The solution is easy. You can split the audio channels and record separately on them by just using a simple $5 audio splitter. Here's the quick and easy solution from YouTuber Caleb Pike from DSLR Video Shooter:

With just an old splitter you can take what was one input and turn it into two. Now this doesn't create a whole new audio channel, but rather will keep the two stereo paired channels separate so you can work with them later. A bit of a workaround, but it gets the job done. It's a really easy solution that won't break the bank, and will give you so much more flexibility with your shooting than just relying on one mic for the whole thing.

While this works with 3.5mm plugs, if you get an XLR adaptor, you should be able to do the same thing (although we haven't tested it).

Here's the cable shown in the video from Amazon.