Beachtek DXA-SLR XLR adaptor for DSLRs

Philip Bloom got his hands on a pre-production DXA-SLR XLR adaptor from Beachtek and he likes it. He's written a review of the unit which solves some of the problems of getting audio into DSLRs including:

The SLR is an active adaptor and has pre-amps in it making it usable for just about all mics out there. It also has +48v phantom power so can power your mics that need it. There are also gain switches underneath the unit. There is a +15db switch for either of the two channels.

A very key and incredibly neat feature is the ability to “disable” auto gain control on the camera. It does this in a very clever way...It activates an inaudible tone of 20 kHz to the left channel (when set to STEREO operation) that prevents the Auto Gain Control from increasing the gain to its maximum level

One thing he laments is the lack of proper meters.

The DXA-SLR will be available at the end of March for a list price of $399.