Canon 60D Low Sound Issue All Mics

[topsturner]

Hello everyone,

Thanks in advance for taking the time to look at this.  I recently bought a second-hand Canon 60D.  All was well, I was excited to find out about Magic Lantern (especially the ability to change bitrate) so eagerly installed it and went off on jobs.  I've run in to a major problem however and can't find a solution - the sound recordings are absolutely awful (see thread 'Audio Problems with Magic Lantern 2.3 & 60D' - http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5186.0, now at nearly 2.4k views, for an indication about how widespread this seems to be).

The camera relies heavily on digital gain to get a decent level, which introduces a constant gain 'hiss'. I have tried with and without ML with no difference (thus seemingly eliminating the hack as the culprit - unless it was ML that screwed up my camera in the first place), so I am using Magic Lantern to try and get to the bottom of the problem as I can manually adjust analogue and digital gain with it enabled.

Now, before people jump on my back and start hitting me on the head with a monopod, repeating over and over 'it's the AGC', 'all DSLR's on-board sound is awful - record externally' etc, may I direct you to this video by the wonderful Dave Dugdale -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=njz9614PX9k

It's exactly 3 years old at time of writing, ML was in very early stages of development yet using an external mic with 0db of digital gain, the sound is clean and very useable. He puts the analogue gain up, takes off the digital gain and, well, that's it. Great sound.

I've made a short video to demonstrate the problem, emulating Dave's settings for direct comparison -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rGHUH1kGIX0

I ramble on, especially at the start, but to a layman like me it seems that the power to the mic is too low (yes, I have mic power 'on' in ML and of course the problem is the same with or without ML anyway), which is why I have to massively boost digital gain for you to even be able to hear me. I then speak with the same settings as Dave in his video, with both the on-board and an external mic. I've added subtitles so you have a clue what I'm saying - if you turn volume up and are using headphones at this point, there is a warning to turn volume down again.

For me, this clearly isn't just a case of 'bad DSLR sound capability' and is a problem that keeps cropping up on the 'net. However, posters get confused responses from people trying to help that suspect their idea of bad sound isn't actually that bad, or that it's the age-old AGC on the Canon rearing it's head. I think it would be helpful for everyone to have a definitive thread that finally nails this problem for future reference.

If I had to guess at a solution, I'd suggest that there's a firmware issue in there somewhere - I personally think the camera isn't powering the internal mic sufficiently (in fact hardly at all). But I'm no sound engineer or firmware programming genius and don't have a clue how to solve this problem. Which is why I'm here!

Once again, thank you all in advance for any help or advice you can offer.

[topsturner]

As an addendum to the above - as some suggested on other threads I have tried removing the wind filter in ML and the Canon menu with no difference.  I have also tried uninstalling ML and all that happens is that the camera uses a huge amount of digital gain to get a decent level, even in 'Manual' mode, so I've gone back to ML so that I can adjust any settings you guys suggest.