Effects of phantom power on dynamic mics...
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- pushin' record
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Effects of phantom power on dynamic mics...
Okay, I think I know the answer but I sure don't know why... what are the effects of running phantom power on dynamic mics? Long term? Short term? Any?
I've got a FirePod and the phantom power is supplied in two blocks of four (meaning if you want power on channel one, you get 1-4, channel 5, you get 5-8 )... I don't mind smoking a couple of 57's or something, but I get a little nervous (maybe for no reason) plugging in a 421 or my PR-40 on a "powered" channel... so can this hurt these mics at all?
MEAT
I've got a FirePod and the phantom power is supplied in two blocks of four (meaning if you want power on channel one, you get 1-4, channel 5, you get 5-8 )... I don't mind smoking a couple of 57's or something, but I get a little nervous (maybe for no reason) plugging in a 421 or my PR-40 on a "powered" channel... so can this hurt these mics at all?
MEAT
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- george martin
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It is very rare that a ribbon mic will get ruined by phantom power. It is possible but all the correctly wired beyers, fostex, shure, b&o's, and royers I have used work fine with phantom power. The real problem is when you use an xlr input from a line level piece of gear, say sending signal from one board to another xia xlr. You can get crackly noise if the phantom power is being sent back to the original board. Dynamic mics inherantly do not have a problem with phantom.
Frost
Frost
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Whachu 'talkin' 'bout Willis?!Frost wrote:It is very rare that a ribbon mic will get ruined by phantom power.
Frost
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- Marc Alan Goodman
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It's true! Phantom Power itself isn't dangerous to ribbon mics. What's dangerous is when the power is interrupted to one side, as in a bad cable or patching with the phantom power on so that the cable touches the wrong contacts for a second.parlormusic wrote:Whachu 'talkin' 'bout Willis?!Frost wrote:It is very rare that a ribbon mic will get ruined by phantom power.
Frost
The reason people say it's so dangerous comes from a time when everybody worked with consoles that had universal phantom power. So you had to remember to patch the mic either with the phantom off or before the cable was plugged into the microphone itself. XLRs don't have the same problem since the contacts all naturally touch at the right places at the same time. Plenty of consoles (such as the entire neve 80 series) never had switches to turn the phantom off, and TONS of records were made using ribbon mics and those boards.
In theory doing this could trash a dynamic as well, though they're traditionally a bit more hearty. As long as you're careful about turning the phantom off when you plug the mic in you shouldn't have any problems.
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