Sony A7III External Mic Settings

Discover the settings to get the best out of your external microphone on Sony a7iii.

Mirrorless and DSLR cameras don’t come with the best preamplifiers needed to boost audio signals from external audio microphones, and the Sony a7iii is no different. However, you can get around this issue by getting your camera’s and your external mic’s settings right.

In this guide, we will go through what kind of settings you need to have for shotgun and lavalier external mics for your Sony A7iii.

Quick Answer

As a general rule for shotgun mics, for better sound quality, it is good to keep the audio levels on your Sony A7iii on the lower end and the levels on your mic on the higher end.

In more exact settings, keep the levels on the camera at 1-10 level and keep the gain levels at the higher end on your external mics. For example, in Rode VideoMic NTG, keep it around the max level of 15. In other words, maintain the camera gain levels in lower thirds and mic levels in higher thirds.

For lav mics, you can either pad or boost the signal coming from the mic and keep the levels low on your camera.

The on-screen audio input level should be around that -12 db level to get peaking without clipping.

Sony A7III Settings for External Mics

To ensure that your camera-external microphone setup captures high-quality audio, you need to configure the settings. Below are my recommended settings.

1. Connect the Mic:

If you have any of the external shotgun mics like Rode VideoMic NTG, Rode VideoMic Pro, or Sony ECMGZIM, start by plugging it into the camera’s 3.5 mm built-in mic jack. You can find this jack input on the top left side of the camera.

Make sure you don’t confuse it with the headphone jack; the microphone jack is red.

Please note that when an external microphone is connected, the camera’s internal mic turns off automatically.

For better audio quality via an external mic, it is noteworthy that shotgun mics are highly directional, so please ensure that the microphone is aimed at your subject for better sound quality.

For lavalier mics like Rode SmartLav+, Sennheiser G3 or G4, or Sony ECM-AW4, first up, sync your transmitter and receiver of your lav mic setup. Next, plug your lav microphone into the transmitter. At this point, you should see some signal being transmitted from the transmitter to the receiver.

After this, you need to connect your receiver to the mic jack of A7iii.

You might need an adaptor if your lav microphone has a different connector than A7iii’s 3.5 mm TRS mic jack. Some mics come with a TRRS audio cable. So, you will need to connect the TRRS female end to the TRS male end.

2. Access the Audio Settings

First of all, you need to access the Audio Settings to turn on the Audio Recording option. For this, you need to navigate as below.
MENU → (Camera Settings 2) → [Audio Recording] → desired setting.

Camera Settings2 is at the second tab of the menu and is denoted by a camera icon with 2.

Image from: Premiumbeat

Select “On” for the camera to start your recording sounds (stereo).

3. Navigate to Audio Record Levels

Next up, continue adjusting your audio settings to reach the audio rec level. You can find this through the below navigation:

MENU → (Camera Settings2) → [Audio Rec Level]

The “+” sign will allow you to increase the recording sound level and the “-” will lower it down for you. There are 31 levels on A7iii.

Image from: 4kshooters

Please note that these levels are available only when the shooting video mode is set to “movie” and unavailable during slow-motion/quick-motion shooting.

Please make sure that for better quality sounds, the on-screen level should be around that -12 dB mark.

4. Getting the Optimal Sound Record Levels

Now, we are at the crucial stage of audio settings the audio levels right for your video. Get ready to take your YouTube videos to the next level.

As a general rule, for best results, it is better to keep the audio levels on your Sony A7iii on the lower end and the levels on your external microphone on the higher end.

In more precise settings, keep the levels on camera at 1-10 and keep the gain levels on the higher end in shotgun external mics.

For example, in Rode VideoMic NTG, keep it around the max level of 15. Generally, keep the camera gain levels in lower thirds and mic levels in higher thirds.

If you will do the opposite, meaning keeping levels high on your device and lower on your mic, there will be higher background noise.

This is because, as mentioned earlier, cameras don’t have the best quality preamps. External mics, on the other hand, come with better preamps.

So, at low levels, camera preamps won’t be doing much work, and higher microphone levels would mean better-functioning preamps at work.

Here is what you need to remember in all this, your camera’s primary purpose is to record videos and capture photos, and it is built for that, right?

On the screen, you will also have dB levels in the form of two bars. These bars indicate the signal coming into the device. You should be looking to level them at around -12 dB.

If they get any louder, you are not going to peak and have any of that audio clipping.

You also should not be having them too low. This is because once you start bringing it back up, you are also going to get some other background noises.

5. Learn the Role of Gain Controls On External Mics – Pad and Boost

Most of the external shotgun and lav mics come with two controls in the pad and boost. You need to know their role to get better quality video sound.

In essence, the pad lowers the sensitivity of the external microphone input. A lot of external microphones come with -10dB pads, which essentially lower the sensitivity of the mic by -10 dB.

This function is especially useful when you are capturing video in a loud environment, such as a music concert. The pad allows you to lower the sensitivity of the microphone and give you a less distorted and clearer sound.

Boost gain control is opposite to the pad and as its name suggests, it boots the voice input and is a good addition for DSLR and mirrorless cameras as they usually have a lackluster internal mic.

For most digital lav mics, on the receiver, we can go up to 0 dB or down to -60 dBs. The default is usually set at -30 dB, which is a good level to start your testing. On the transmitter, you can go up to +12 dB or down to -30 dB. In the transmitter, you can leave it at 0 which is the default level for most lavs. You need to do this from the menu.

For some other lavs such as RØDELink Filmmaker Kit, there are physical knobs to get and you have only three options of 0 dB, +10 dB, and +20 dB on the transmitter. So you can only boost the signal out of the transmitter.

On the receiver, there are 0 db, -10dB, and -20dB switches, so you can only pad the signals.

Some Additional Tips for Getting Better Audio from Your A7iii-External Microphone Setup