If you owned a crummy video camera in the 90’s that didn’t have xlr inputs, you may have had a Beachtek adapter. They are the people that allow you to attach balanced audio via XLR to your video camera that only inputs an unbalanced 1/8″ kiddie jack. Their newest foray is into the HDSLR market. It’s a perfect fit for Beachtek since no current DSLR offers XLR inputs for audio. Hell, they don’t even offer a headphone jack.

The Beachtek DXA-5DA offers a whole bunch of features you’re used to having on your video camera, but don’t have on your HDSLR, mainly the aforementioned XLR inputs and headphone jack, along with VU meters, volume knobs, and most importantly Camera Auto Gain Disabler.

With the flip of a switch, the DXA-5DA sends out an inaudible tone to the camera, engaging the automatic gain control on the camera and lowering the noise floor immediately. If you’ve used an HDSLR before, you know that you either have to record your audio to a 2nd source like a flash recorder, or install a 3rd party firmware onto the camera such as Magic Lantern for Canon’s 5D to allow you to disable the AGC (Auto Gain Control) on the camera. For those with Canon’s 7D, we’re still waiting on the firmware update from either Canon or Magic Lantern. The Beachtek gives us some relief from 2nd source audio recording and extra post production work for the time being and as you can see in the video below, it also accomplishes the job of giving you some clean audio.

One thing to point out – when the AGC is disabled, the DXA-5DA sends a 20 kHz tone on the left channel to the camera.  This is how it accomplishes the task of “deactivating” the AGC – tricking the camera to think that it is getting a steady audio signal.  Unfortunately, this leaves you with only one channel (the right one) free of the 20 kHz tone.  In most situations, you could just EQ the 20 kHz tone in post.  However, that becomes another step in the process so keep that in mind.

It should also be noted that Juicedlink makes a similar product, and swears theirs is better. If I get my hands on it, we’ll test it out for you.

Here is a quick test with and without the Beachtek’s Auto Gain Disabler enabled.

The Beachtek DXA-5DA controls

The main controls of the DXA-5DA are similar to what you would expect on any professional audio device or professional camera.  The LCD screen shows your audio meters as well as whether you’re in mono or stereo mode, if you have the AGC enabled or disabled and battery life.  The left and right faders operate as you would expect and above each fader is a Line Level/Mic Level switch.

Above you can see a close up of the G1/G2 ground switch, the power switch, mono/stereo switch and the AGC switch. There is also a headphone jack and corresponding volume control so that you can actually monitor your audio.  All in all, this is a well-designed device. The controls are easy to use and the DXA-5DA does a good job of battling the 7D’s AGC problem.  The 20 kHz tone is a minor speed bump in the process if you need two channels of audio, but EQing a known frequency is much better than dealing with the Auto Gain, in my opinion.

Full specs on the unit here.  Price per unit $329.