Proper Use of Phantom Power

C

CaptainWinkle

New member
I remember reading somewhere that when you plug in a condenser microphone you should have all the gains and volumes turned all the way down before you turn on phantom power and you should have them all turned down before you turn off phantom power too, and then wait a few moments for the power to stabilize before disconnecting your microphone.

How necessary are these precautions and procedures? Would plugging a microphone in with phantom power turned on cause a problem? Would turning off phantom power with the gain still turned up cause any problems? Thank you for your wisdom!
 
As long as there's nothing wrong with the mic or the preamp, none of it really matters as far as damage on this side. Hot swapping and even turning phantom power on and off can cause some pretty severe pops which will propagate downstream and might damage the speakers (and/or ears) at the far end.
 
So the advice on how to handle phantom power and the volume levels is all about the speakers and monitors and doesn't have anything to do with the microphone.
 
The microphone doesn't care that much. It's not going to suffer. Your ears might.

It is good practice to turn levels down before plugging or unplugging a condenser.

Having said that, there's many a time when I haven't (mostly through absent-mindedness), and the ensuing bang is good for waking me up.
 
Some people get very anal about pulling faders down, AND the gains, and some even make the connection, then turn on the power and the reverse at power down. The only reason for pulling the fader down is to avoid speaker damage - that's it. plugging in source to an input with it turned up to normal operating levels produces a pop. The pop from a phantom powered input is just louder. On a big PA system with thousands of Watts, if you plug something in and it goes crack very loudly, you will get yelled at. Somebody usually yells MUTE, and then OK. Equally, an engineer working alone might look at the XLR cable in one hand, the mic in the other - and then look at the long journey to the sound desk and back he will have to do twice, and just plug it in, hear the bang, and yell "sorry".

I've never killed a driver doing it, but I suspect others may have, although it could have been coincidence.

It's simply good practice, and worth doing if you can. I personally don't lose sleep over it! I get more cross by people overarming my mic cables when packing away than I do plugging mics in. In fact, on one of my mixers, the phantom button is a global one, on the rear panel and difficult to get to. It has never been switched off!
 
When I had a brick and mortar studio, my mixing board had the Phantom power on all the channels turned on for 20 years. I would simply plug things in. The only thing I would turn down was the monitor volume.

The only danger is the loud pop that it makes, and that is only a danger to the monitors or you ears.

It's not that big of a deal.
 
Yeah, it's a good idea to turn down before plugging anything in because there is almost always some kind of thump or pop.

There is that thing about ribbon mics and phantom power. It is at least theoretically possible that as you're plugging in, one or two of the pins might make connection before the third, and it could damage the ribbon. Or something like that. It's very rare, but still pretty common advice to turn phantom off before plugging in a ribbon. I mean, they don't usually actually need it anyway, but if you've got a global switch and are also using condensers...
 
Always a good idea with ribbons, but in reality, the ribbon mics that would be damaged are few and far between in home recording circles. Mostly vintage mics that are worth many thousands of dollars...

Hell, there are a couple that have built in preamps that run on Phantom power. You really just need to know what you are hooking up and read the manual to find any restrictions.
 
Thank you again for the information. I just wanted to make sure that plugging / unplugging a condenser microphone with the phantom power turned on and / or the gain turned up wouldn't damage the microphone in any way.
 
rob aylestone said:
Equally, an engineer working alone might look at the XLR cable in one hand, the mic in the other - and then look at the long journey to the sound desk and back he will have to do twice, and just plug it in, hear the bang, and yell "sorry".
Click to expand...

I've done that. I just tell everyone to cover their ears!
 
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