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Hi. I always wondered about phantom powered mics- which should I do first?
Power down mixer (phantom power), unplug mic cable, or turn off mic channels? Does it matter? Obviously I bring down faders and monitors first, but then what?

Comments

anonymous Sun, 02/26/2006 - 03:46

CharlesDayton wrote: I remember reading either in Mix or EQ that you should turn off phantom power before unplugging the mic. Unplugging it with it on can cause some kind of magnetic problem with the capsule. I don't remember what it was.

If you do it during a live show it makes one hell of a pop (bang) through the sound system :lol:

RemyRAD Sun, 02/26/2006 - 16:49

You know, real studios, with real consoles, don't necessarily turn their phantom power on or off as many consoles don't even offer that (like my old Neves). You are plugging in and unplugging with phantom power on most of the time. You do need to keep your faders down while plugging in or unplugging microphones because you will blow speakers if you don't, which is also a good reason not to put microphones on patch bays with active phantom so patching microphones directly on a patch bay is not a good idea (even though my old NBC Neve desks were specified that way, it became problematic when things got dirty overtime, we were patching between feeds (microphones) from different studios). There is no magnetism problem with condenser microphones since there is nothing in a condenser microphone that has much to do with magnetism, except perhaps the iron core in the output transformer. Ribbon microphones are the most susceptible to damage from phantom power as they don't make really good " ribbon tweeters".

Ms. Remy Ann David