Question

I understand that this may be kind of a random question, but I really do need help. I haven't been able to record like I have been wanting to thanks to (what I think) the Phantom Power being too strong. What I mean is that every time I try to record at all on my microphone, it's always fuzzy and hissy, and only picks up a little bit of my muffled voice, and this is with the knob turned all the way up. The odd thing is, however, is when I turn off the Phantom Power, there are 15-30 seconds of it sounding fantastic and exactly what I want it to. After that 15-30 seconds, it, of course, fades out into nothingness. I don't really understand what this is and why it's happening, but my theory is that the Phantom Power sort of over-rides the necessary power for it to sound good, and because of that, all i'm getting is a bunch of static and muffled recording. Am I missing something? I've looked everywhere, and I haven't found any luck. And if it's not the Phantom Power being too strong and I am missing something in that regard, don't be afraid to correct me. I want to know all the ins and outs of home recording so that I am able to record the music I want to record hassle-free. Anyways, any help would be greatly be appreciated. Thank you so much.

PC - AIO 520-24AST All-in-One (ideacentre) - Type F0D3

Operating System - Windows 10 Home

Application Version - Studio One 4 (I'm not 100% sure what it means by "Application Version")

Audio Interface and it's Driver/Firmware - AudioBox USB 96, Condenser Mic M7 (1.12)

Digital Mixer - (I think Studio One 4. I'm not sure)

Setup - I'm not entirely sure what, if anything really happened.

Answer 1

Phantom power too strong ??  It's either 48 volts DC or it's not. Have you tested the DC voltage ? The first thing to test though is the M7 mic on another phantom powered input. Test it on an external hardware mixer input with phantom power switched on. Or call into a music shop and ask politely if they'd test it for you. The other test is to try a different condenser mic on your audio interface. These two tests will determine whether the fault is with the mic or the audio interface.

If the mic works fine on the mixer, then you need to test the phantom power voltage on the audio interface.

Let me me know how you get on with the first two tests first of all.  Cheers

PS: I would never consider lowering the phantom power voltage at all. This is definitely not the way to fix the problem. To do this would be a pain in the a.r.s.e anyway, because it would involve a modification to the stepup voltage converter inside the audio interface.