Hey folks,
Passing through a public building, I saw a camera operator with a Red Epic (no talent there yet). I had to stop to pester him. It turns out that he was having audio problems, so I was glad I did.
The issue (seemed to be) crosstalk from channel 2 to channel 1 (during peaks from the receiver, but only when the G3 was really peaking hard, as in the Epic meters at full red overload), so I quickly looked over his gear patch. Dunno what the Epic gain levels were set at, but the metering seemed fine on channel 2 unless a hard SPL peak was introduced.
Otherwise, (barring a listen on the cans) I saw several issues.
1). He was using a Red, which seems to be about the most audio "unfriendly" camera discussed here.
2). No mixer of any kind (also no soundie: the underlying issue).
3). No limiters in the signal path (didn't check the Epic's 'soft limiters' settings)
4). Overloading (poorly designed?) camera audio (the Epic manual calls them high quality) pre-amps.
5). Dividing a balanced line level with a split XLR cable. I never do this, and I've always wondered about the efficacy of splitting any XLR signal, mic or line level.
There were no crosstalk problems as long as the receiver was not in full overload, so I'm guessing this was the issue ~ just too much signal for the Epic's pre-amps to handle.
(Marc, you're right about the Red forums. Appalling.)