what the?

[lucid]

ok, today we were doing a live recording in my room... 2 guitars (each amp miced with an sm57), bass direct to board, and an ecm8000 over the violin. each track was going into 4 separate tracks in samplitude...

what happens to the ecm800 violin track? just noise. phantom power was on. gain was as low as i could go and there was still noise. i turned off lights, checked everything, still noise. then i saw the meters fly off into the read. so i took off the ecm and replaced with with another. ok, fine. then we record, same noise. what is going on!?

 

[Track Rat]

Either a bad mic cable or a bad preamp, or even the patch cable from the preamp to the input of your recording device. Connect up one device/cable at a time and wiggle cables/connectors to see if you can "tease"the problem into surfacing. Basic trouble shooting.

 

[lucid]

it is a behringer mixer... although all 8 pre's have been used succesfully before... coul dbe cable, i suppose.. will check that out


thanks

anyone else?

 

[Markd102]

Uh oh..... he mentioned "Behringer" in the same sentence as "mixer" !!!!!! ..........

 

[wilkee]

I would check the cable. It sounds like either pin 2 or 3 has lost its continuity this usually results in a load of noise as it means that only one polarity of the phantom power gets to the mic ( turning off the phantom power should confirm this).

I think this is what "Markd102" meant but he got confused and got out the blowtorch instead

 

[lucid]

yeah when i turned off the phantom power the noise stopped. i will test the mics again later... i hope it is the cable because i just got these mics! thanks for the info

 

[Whyte Ice]

Sometimes when I'm using my Behringer mixer, it overheats and causes so problems in the sound and I just shut it off and let it cool for a half hour. Then back to normal operations.

 

[Markd102]

Sorry guys, couldn't resist the dig

A friend of mine has had two of the little 602 mixers and the phantom shit itself on both units. If you've got access to a multimeter, see if it's putting out the required 48V. If you haven't, take it to any electrician, electronics repair man etc and ask them to check it for you. They probably won't even charge you for it because it's a 30sec job. If it's putting out less or more than 48V then that's your problem.

Try another cable first though as that is definately a posibility, I just know that phantom power is dodgy in Behringer mixers.

Good luck

Mark

 

[Randy Yell]

An ECM8000 is supposed to be powerable from 15v to 48v so I doubt if it's underpowered.I think it's the cable.

 

[Markd102]

True, but it could be putting out too much and that will give you noise.
I've done many live walk-ins and the first thing I do is shove a mulitmeter in a pre and see what the phantom's doing. I've come across numerous mixers putting out anything up to 140V !!!!!!

 

[lucid]

i really hope my phantom power isn't screwed...

if it is the cable i will still be a happy behringer user!

 

[wilkee]

The average current consumption for a phantom powered Mic is only in the region of 5ma so even if you had a cap mic connected to every input the consumption would be negligable and this is not the reason why Behringer power supplies run so hot.

One of the ways of making sure that the power supply does not interact with the electronics of audio equipment to to use Stabilisation which usually consists of a small I.C. with 3 legs that look like a power transistor. What this thing does is to regulate the voltage say from 20v down to 15v in doing so it is able to hold the 15v very accurately even though the 20v may be varying.

In doing so it has to disipate the lost voltage which it has to do by turning it into heat. This is why Behringer power supplies run hot and as long as the design temp is not exceeded there should be no problems (but on a hot sticky day in Dallas?)

 

[lucid]

thank god for air conditioning! i (as well as my equipment) would be dying out here...

 

[lucid]

yup, it was just the cable... i can't believe i was too stupid to think about that when the problem occured!

 

[Track Rat]

 

[Markd102]

Lucid
I'm glad for you it wasn't the phantom power
I'd give that lead a good checkout or don't use it for anything. It's probably got an earthing problem to be causing noise. It could introduce a bit of noise even with dynamic mics.