Still looking for a shotgun mic for my Sony HDR-FX1. Couple questions that I'm hoping you guys can help answer. Most of the higher quality mics are XLR, yet most of us are using prosumer camcorders with stereo mini-jacks or some sort of XLR adapter plug. Do you loose quality when you connect your XLR mic to the camcorder using these adapters?

There are several shotgun mics using the the mini-stereo format that I'm interested in, namely the Sennheiser MKE-400 and the Rode "VideoMic". Both are getting good reviews but I'm not sure how they stack up to some of the XLR mics. If the audio is close, then it seems much easier to just use on of these "mini-mics". On the otherhand, if the XLR mic quality is that much better (even after being run through an adapter for the stereo mini plug), then I'd rather put out the extra couple buck and go with that.

Thanks for any and all input!

JIM