For someone who has been making films since 1981 his sound is consistently horrible.
Not true, at all.
Ron, are you referring to the 2 links, above? Trust me, the source dvds sound fine. As I stated, those docs were grabbed off of the discs and compressed by a 3rd party - Chris Fenney. I agree, that whatever Vimeo or Chris did makes them sound like crap. Regardless, the links should still interest the O.P.
Now that you've made sound an issue, perhaps it would do you good, (since you just bought your DVX100b and are shopping for a shotgun mic) to read my posts on the subject. You saw the footage of my
Recording/Composing setup? I can filter, reverse, chop, vocode and wave modulate audio to subtle or extreme results. It also pays to just capture good audio.
For movie production, I keep 4 mics on hand for recording - 3 Sennheiser shotguns of varying lengths (ME64, 66 and 67) and a Phantom powered Audio Technica. For my current shoots, I get most of my dialogue in closeup, where the mic is within 2' of an actor's mouth, which I did in the above interviews. Like you, I also use Panny cameras (dvx, hvx) and they have excellent audio converters for recording without a mixer. Not only that, they allow you to set two different levels, in case your actors want to yell and try and distort the input. You can set one level lower, so that doesn't happen on that channel. Simply copy the appropriate side to "fill" the opposite left or right signal in your editing ap.
In case you think I'm full of it, here are some MP3 audio examples from my current project. I recorded everything with the ME66 in these. I had no sound man or DP - just me with the camera and a mic stand, on location.
Android Reyna kills Kam patrol in fog
Jason captured by soldiers
Reyna doubts Jason
No doubt that I've learned a lot since 1981, when the Super 8mm projector would only allow you one pass with the "mix" setting. (meant for adding music) One mess up and you had to re-record the whole thing. I learned about foley, early on.