CR-500HD Mic [seeking electronics guru]

[nowherekid]

I've had my FineVu 500 for almost a month. So far I love the camera but the mic is horrible. I have to turn the volume on VLC up to 200% to hear anything. I'm a computer guy so playing around with new toys is fun and without further delay:

I'm looking for some electronics person that can tell me if its possible to add a different microphone. I can't tell much from from the open pictures from the review here and don't want to disassemble it to look at it like an idiot. I have the skills to do it if its possible but I can't tell if it is or not.

There are a lot of small mics out there and I could like to add one to my camera. Can anyone tell me if this is possible?

 

[lobsternaut]

Did you already try turning up the mic volume to maximum in the config settings? On mine the audio is plenty loud even with VLC volume at 100%. My config file has "MIC Volume=2".

There are disassembly instructions here. The microphone looks to be surface-mounted to the board, so to successfully replace it you'd have to be dang good at (de)soldering SMD components, and of course be careful not to burn anything else on the board. Personally I wouldn't attempt it.

 

[nowherekid]

That sounds kind of fun to me. I live with electrical engineers that would be interested but I'll play around with the mic settings some. I've got a long trip coming up so I'll tweak them now and then to get samples of various settings.