MXL-990 with phantom power 48v... what am I doing wrong?

  • Thread starter Thread starter 36chambers
  • Start date Start date
USB is bad, they have an alien at Area 51, America didn't land on the moon and Obama is a Muslim. Where do all these things come from?

Seriously, USB is a very stable, very proven form of interface. I know people (including myself) who have used it for years without a single glitch.

My bigger Firewire interface, on the other hand, is as "fussywire" as Dave says--but, once fine tuned, does a good job with stupidly large numbers of tracks.
 
Yo Bobbs.

FireWire ports were only found on very up market PCs in UK (and macs of course but then not all of those!) so the audio tyro had to buy another retrofit PCI card, an additional 30quid or so. Added to this only the Texas Instrument chipset was guaranteed to work for audio.

Laptops were a special case. They rarely had 6pin conns' and so could not provide bus power (usb always does) and if you did not have a TI Cset on the MOBO and no cardbus slot you were stuffed! Even those laptops that could take a TI card often simply did not have the BIOS "grunt" to run FW.

Lastly, there is a rare earth loop issue that FW can suffer from and it is the very devil to sort!

I will admit that both laptops and tower PCs now have the juice to run FW but too late!

ThunderBolt looks good in theory but in practice it seems to be going the way FW did, i.e. on macs and high end MOBOs but nothing for us poor folk!
And ain't the leads and adptors expensive?!!!

Dave.
 
Even as a Firewire user I wouldn't recommend anyone get involved with FW, especially now.

In my case, the 4 pin/6 pin power thing was a non-issue--I run with a separate power supply anyway. Similarly, my previous laptop (a Toshiba) had a TI chipset FW port. However, my present laptop was more complicated--nobody does a built in FW socket anymore and even a cardbus slot for a TI-based adaptor limited my choice a lot.

However, I've bought myself a few more years--but then have to figure out a totally new interface methinks. (I've bored the forum often enough but for those who don't know I have a DM1000 digital mixer with two MY16AT expansion cards giving me 32 channels of ADAT in/out via an M Audio Profire lightbridge.)

I suspect if I'm still messing with recording when my current laptop dies I'll be using some sort of network connection (Audinate Dante maybe) rather than any form of conventional interface.
 
Analong>USB interface

Bobbsy said:
USB is bad, they have an alien at Area 51, America didn't land on the moon and Obama is a Muslim. Where do all these things come from?

Seriously, USB is a very stable, very proven form of interface. I know people (including myself) who have used it for years without a single glitch.
Click to expand...

I do voice audio for radio broadcasting. For a very long time I used and old Peavey analog board and a small box that let me plug in the RCA out from the board to it and then the box plugged into the PC via USB.

I have also used a "Blue Icicle" with a little volume control on it to bypass the big board completely.

Trying to rig up something that ends up going into the mic input on a PC is probably not the way to go. However, I do have an XLR to iPod Touch/iPad that works well enough.

Some day you may want to consider the (ever cheaper) digital recorders so you can avoid any PC fan and hard drive noise.
 
I've never understood the problem with firewire.
I've had digi 002,003, presonus firepod, presonus firestudio mobile and motu 828 mk2 : All firewire, no problems.
Over the years I've migrated from XP through to modern apple OS.

My dell laptop had 4 pin FW which was fine as all those interfaces were mains powered. (didn't have the FS mobile at the time).
I added a firewire pci card to my last desktop for about £4 on ebay. Never a problem.
My macbook pro has thunderbolt which carries firewire. The adapter was 99p on ebay. Again, never a problem.

Maybe I've just been lucky but generally lucky isn't my style....
 
Steenamaroo said:
I've never understood the problem with firewire.
Click to expand...

I've had a lot of problems with firewire and I think It might still be causing me problems. I used a firewire interface many years ago with WinXP and never a problem. Ran great!! Moved to Lavry's for a few years and didn't need firewire. Switched to Win7 somewhere along the way, no problem. Switched mobo's and processor, all good. Then last year I bought a UAD Apollo which requires firewire. And not just any firewire, one from their approved list. Even with an approved firewire card, I had (and continue to have) problems.

If I turn off my computer for the night, I'll get the dreaded bsod the next morning when I turn it on. Anymore, I just leave my computer on all time. No problem with the interface itself or recording and glitches. Just the bsod and I am pretty sure it's the firewire card and/or driver doing it.
 
So, 36,
Do you have any more relevant questions or comments in regards to your conundrum?


homestudioguy said:
Definitely need an analog to digital interface with Phantom Power using USB (or Fire-Wire if your Computer has it).
Here are some lower cost ones to consider:
Bob G.

$149- Steinberg UR22 | Sweetwater.com
$149- PreSonus AudioBox USB | Sweetwater.com
$149- Avid Mbox 3 Mini with Pro Tools Express | Sweetwater.com
$149- Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 | Sweetwater.com
$199- Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 | Sweetwater.com
Click to expand...

homestudioguy said:
You should strongly consider buying a USB equipped interface/box
to plug your microphone into
that will change your Analog Signal into a Digital Signal
that will go to your computer through a USB Cable
that connects from the interface to your computer
and then into your recording software.
Click to expand...

homestudioguy said:
USB, generally speaking, is very stable and is still very current.
Click to expand...
 
Steenamaroo said:
I've never understood the problem with firewire.
I've had digi 002,003, presonus firepod, presonus firestudio mobile and motu 828 mk2 : All firewire, no problems.
Over the years I've migrated from XP through to modern apple OS.

My dell laptop had 4 pin FW which was fine as all those interfaces were mains powered. (didn't have the FS mobile at the time).
I added a firewire pci card to my last desktop for about £4 on ebay. Never a problem.
My macbook pro has thunderbolt which carries firewire. The adapter was 99p on ebay. Again, never a problem.

Maybe I've just been lucky but generally lucky isn't my style....
Click to expand...

My experience with Firewire is an M Audio Profire Lightbridge. Once set up and going it's been a reliable workhorse but I do find it fussy about things like the switch on order (mixer, interface, then boot computer) and the need for a TI chipset and nothing else.

Oh, and dumping video into a computer direct from a digital camcorder...but memory cards and such have made that application obsolete.

The other part of the issue is my personal choice to use a laptop, not a desktop and work in Windows. It's now damn near impossible to get a Windows laptop with a FW port and almost as hard to get one with a cardbus slot. This makes the choice of hardware very limited unless I'm willing to move to Apple (which I'm not...it would mean re-buying too much software and relearning too much about computers which, at my age, ain't gonna happen!).
 
Bobbsy said:
My experience with Firewire is an M Audio Profire Lightbridge. Once set up and going it's been a reliable workhorse but I do find it fussy about things like the switch on order (mixer, interface, then boot computer) and the need for a TI chipset and nothing else.

Oh, and dumping video into a computer direct from a digital camcorder...but memory cards and such have made that application obsolete.

The other part of the issue is my personal choice to use a laptop, not a desktop and work in Windows. It's now damn near impossible to get a Windows laptop with a FW port and almost as hard to get one with a cardbus slot. This makes the choice of hardware very limited unless I'm willing to move to Apple (which I'm not...it would mean re-buying too much software and relearning too much about computers which, at my age, ain't gonna happen!).
Click to expand...

Maybe I did just get lucky after all, man.
 
Steenamaroo said:
Maybe I did just get lucky after all, man.
Click to expand...

Had you been lurking in forums such as Studio-central 3-4 years ago my friend, you will have seen that barely a week passed without someone having a FW issue of some sort.

Sometimes it was mild glitches, especially as the CPU load increased but quite often the units simple would not work together at all. Usually the fitting of a TI chipset PCI card solved the problem but many recordist had a big yen for a laptop based system (which I have never really understood?) and the problems here were often insurmountable.

Then there was a specific mark of MOBO (might have been an Asus?) which caused a ground loop and the obvious fix of open circuiting the shield is not possible for FW it seems because the daft buggers use it as a DC return! (N.B. You CAN o/c a usb shield but it won't fix a ground loop!).

But to be fair to Fussywire, usb had its problems too but these were mostly due to low CPU grunt or/and poor drivers and implementation of the protocol. I had an M-Audio fast track pro for instance and I must have tried it on at least 7 different computers and all worked fine, even a P4 WMCEd which M-A said was not supported!

Once RME and to a lesser extent MOTU got on the usb case, things improved immeasurably.

Dave.
 
Lt. Bob said:
in which case I'm not seeing how you're getting phantom power to the mic.
Click to expand...

I'll go over it again for you.

>connect microbone and a box of glorious phantom power with XLR
>use an XLR to stereo jack cable to connect the phantom power box to the PC (protip: it has four ports, two female and two male)

And that's how I'm getting phantom power into the microphone.
 
Okay.

If I send back my phantom power box and buy the Steinburg UR22, am I going to need to buy an XLR to USB cable or does that come with it? That feel when you can't just buy a full set in one... ;____;

I mean, you can do that with PCs (I can build them but some can't) so why not with mics and computers? Or can you? Guh.
 
36chambers said:
Okay.

If I send back my phantom power box and buy the Steinburg UR22, am I going to need to buy an XLR to USB cable or does that come with it? That feel when you can't just buy a full set in one... ;____;

I mean, you can do that with PCs (I can build them but some can't) so why not with mics and computers? Or can you? Guh.
Click to expand...

You would not use an XLR-to-USB cable, the audio interface is the a-to-d converter, sends a digital signal via standard USB cable.
 
36chambers said:
I'll go over it again for you.

>connect microbone and a box of glorious phantom power with XLR
>use an XLR to stereo jack cable to connect the phantom power box to the PC (protip: it has four ports, two female and two male)

And that's how I'm getting phantom power into the microphone.
Click to expand...

So yes, that gets +48V to the mic but in order to feed the 3,5mm stereo jack on a PC it would need to contain an unbalancing transformer and feed both ring and tip of the jack to give a double mono signal to the computer. Easy enough thing to make, never heard of anyone doing so? Trust us and go:....
Mic>XLR to XLR lead> UR22>usb lead to usb port on PC...Job's a good'un.

Dave.
 
For your camcorder application, fine.

However, for the original poster it's just money down the drain because with the money spent on a phantom power supply then money spent on this adaptor, he'd be a long way down the road of getting a proper interface. Don't forget that, even with the adaptor, you're still running the mic into the crap 39 cent sound chip on the computer, with all the regular problems of noise, lack of headroom and latency because it doesn't use ASIO drivers.
 
Bobbsy said:
For your camcorder application, fine.

However, for the original poster it's just money down the drain because with the money spent on a phantom power supply then money spent on this adaptor, he'd be a long way down the road of getting a proper interface. Don't forget that, even with the adaptor, you're still running the mic into the crap 39 cent sound chip on the computer, with all the regular problems of noise, lack of headroom and latency because it doesn't use ASIO drivers.
Click to expand...
Yup. And it is not all in one tin and there is not going to be room for a decent transformer AND a mu metal can so it will hum like cnut unless kept well away from AC sources.
But yes, good find for the camcorder brigade.

Dave.
 
Newbie-
You are in too big a hurry to record. You need to study first. This stuff is NOT all ready out of the box. Always visit friends who are recording and make notes about what they have, listen when they give you advice, and buy them some pizza or beer as a payment for taking time with you. Don't just go running out and buying interfaces or converters until you understand what they are for and how they work. If you cannot answer these questions, you need to study. What is a signal chain? What is gain-staging? and what kind of frequencies do different instruments have like vocals, hi-hats- bass drums, and guitars (bass and regular). Then set stuff up and practice making a mess until you slowly begin to get it right. Good luck
Rod Norman,
engineer
 
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