Check out this thread - about half-way down the first page I did a test.

(Dead Link Removed)

Dynamic mics should not be affected at lengths of up to 300 feet. For optimum performance medium and large diaphram condensors should really have a phantom power unit at the stage near the mic instead of trying to draw it thru long cable runs(>100 feet).

Ok, thanx for the help!

Actually, I think Dave has parts of it the wrong way round.

All condensor mics I know of contains some kind of amplifier inside them. And all that I have used (not very many, admittedly) allows you to run 300 feet of cable. Works with phantom power as well.

The ones that has a special power supply, mainly tube mics, should of course have that power supply on stage. I would not make the cable between the power supply and the mic very long, but the signal going out afterwards should be OK on a long cable.

Dynamic mics on the other hand seldom has a builtin amplifier. In my humble experience they suffer a bit more from mainly hum on a long cable. They will also happily run 300 feet without problems.

For both of course goes that you should have decent cables and be careful about hum sources. The differences between cable types becomes more accented when you have very long cables. The real test is actually trying them out, if they sound good they are good. I tend to avoid drawing mic cables in parallell with net cables if avoidable.

Gunnar.

I was trying to say that with medium and large condensors the phantom power supply is better at the stage, close to the mic instead of drawing it 300 feet from the FOH console. This is simply due to power drop over the long cable runs. It will work in both cases. More voltage to a condenser mic means higher output to the pres.

Hi Dave,
true. When possible it may be good to have not only the power supply but also the preamp on the stage.

But if you take out the old multimeter and measure it, you will find that 300 feet of standard mic cable will not have very much of a voltage drop. A typical phantom powered condensor draws from 2 to 5 milliamps which is not very much. Maximum allowed according to the spec is 10mA. And in this respect medium and large condensors are no different from small ones, the worst power draw I have seen is some Earthworks mics that draw the full 10mA and they are extra small.

Sorry, sound like a knowitall, but sometimes it is important to really look through the assumptions we all carry around.