Phantom Power Saftey Question

[jckinnick]

Is it bad for your equipment to plug and unplug mics while phantom power is still on? Could it mess something up if so like what?

[The Scum]

The first thing that comes to mind is you're more likely to get big pops and thumps unplugging live mics, so you risk your speakers.

99% of the time, the mics and the mic inputs will be fine. Phantom power is designed to be fairly safe...there's almost no current available, so there's very little destructive force. There were "classic/vintage" consoles where the phantom wasn't switchable, and on all the time.

The other 1% is probably attributable to mis-wired cables, mics that had some other damage already, and freak accidents.

[fossiltooth]

I am going to take the liberty to answer every question about phantom power for the rest of my life:

Dude.

It's fine.

There you go. That settles it.

Are you using an older ribbon mic with a miswired cable?

No?

OK.

Then it's fine.

Every once in a while a superstitious old fogey will tell you that you shouldn't plug or unplug condensers with phantom powered on. You'll hear someone say, that virgin dynamics never exposed to phantom sound better.

Malarky, I say!

There's a lot of studios out there with boards that have global phantom that never gets turned off. Take almost any studio with a 80 series Trident for instance.

Dude.

It's fine.

[joel hamilton]

My console has phantom power on all the time. I still manage to record people.

[nacho459]

Only buy tube condensers that way you won't need phantom power at all.

[A-Barr]

Man, I can't tell you how many hours of my life I've wasted waiting the 30 seconds between shutting off phantom power and unplugging my mics.

[A-Barr]

Only buy tube condensers that way you won't need phantom power at all.

Or ribbons! Tubes and ribbons!

[Ryan Silva]

Hey my last post on this thread got nixed, hmmm? Oh thats right, it was a smart assed post that didn't help the question at hand. Guess I had it commin.

[Ryan Silva]

Ya I still may never be comfortable with pluging and un-plugging mics with phantom on, but it does seem silly nowadays.