Small black boxes...

[mbenny123]

Several years ago, I was at a recording session of a concert band. The engineer (Bruce Leek) had a small black box inline on each of the microphones. There was about 20' of cable, the box, then about 100' of cable back to the control room. He said they would really make the mics sound good, or something like that. I can't remember exactly what he said they were. I'm pretty sure they weren't preamps.

Any idea what these could be?

[punkin]

They weren't tube mics were they? Power supplies 48volts maybe? How about isolation transformers...I donno.

[cpl_crud]

by the discription I'd say an Iso transformer. You can get versions of that that look just like little balck boxes, and over long runs in an environment liek a concert band, it could help.
It could also be a phantom power supply, although I don't see why it would be.

[xstatic]

It could also be placebo. Everyone shows up and looks at the little black lumps and says "cool, the little black boxes are out... we will sound awesome today". Automatically they play better because they think the right equipment is there