Do you have a voltmeter? If not, pick up a cheap one at Radio Shack, Sears, Lowes, or Home Depot (you need one in your studio anyway!) and do this:
Plug the V57 into one channel. This is needed to “load” the phantom power voltage. Plug another cable into one of the other channels. The connecter on the other end of this cable is where you’ll take the measurements. Turn the gain all the way down and make sure the phantom power is OFF. Set your voltmeter to “DC volts” and set the range to the next step above 50 volts. Stick one of the probes into pin 2 and the other into pin 1. Pin 3 is in the middle, so 2 and 1 are at opposite sides of the connecter. Don’t worry about polarity as it doesn’t matter. If the probes are backwards, the voltage will just read negative instead of positive – no big deal. Turn the phantom power ON and you should read 48 volts. If you read less than 40V, the Aardvark isn’t supplying enough voltage and may be defective. Incidentally, my Aardvark Q10 supplies 48 volts no matter how many mics are plugged in.
For curiosity’s sake, I’d try the same process with the 4040 instead of the V57. Whether the voltage stays at 48V or drops using the 4040, this information would be good to have when you call AT to explain the problem.
