Is it safe to hot-swap microphones

[Soap3205]

Is it safe to hot-swap XLR microphones whether it be dynamic or condenser mics?

 

Note. I always turn off 48v before unplugging my condenser 

[Tigerleon]

18 minutes ago, Soap3205 said:

Is it safe to hot-swap XLR microphones whether it be dynamic or condenser mics?

 

Note. I always turn off 48v before unplugging my condenser 

Yes it is. Although anything can happen. It is electronics. But for the most part. It is safe.

[Heliian]

Ya, turn the mic off if possible.  I would just cut the channel on whatever I was swapping so there's no annoying feedback.  

[Soap3205]

12 minutes ago, Tigerleon said:

Yes it is. Although anything can happen. It is electronics. But for the most part. It is safe.

Ok thanks 

[The Flying Sloth]

It's fine, just never do it for tube mics or mics with external power systems

[Psittac]

I "hot swap" my mod mic constantly but that's no 48v.  Have recently been thinking about a better mic, but think I'll post about it.

[H713]

Definitely remember to turn off phantom power. It shouldn't damage anything if you forget to (any competently designed preamp will have input clamps to protect it from the massive transient), but it's still really bad practice. If you can mute that channel, do so. 

 

In a theoretically perfect world, turning on or off Phantom power would not create a transient at all, since it's entirely common-mode. In practice, there's a pretty big transient because it's never 100% common mode, and the CMRR of the preamp isn't infinite. 

 

 

[Ahoy Hoy]

If its a jack cable you need to make sure phantom power is off as you pull out the power will go down all the pins and will kill things. Its a good way to blow up a mac book and apple will be so confused they will refund you.

XLR just yank away thats perfectly fine to unplug.

[H713]

6 hours ago, Ahoy Hoy said:

If its a jack cable you need to make sure phantom power is off as you pull out the power will go down all the pins and will kill things. Its a good way to blow up a mac book and apple will be so confused they will refund you.

XLR just yank away thats perfectly fine to unplug.

I have always been of the philosophy that phantom power over any connector other than XLR is a scary idea for this very reason.

 

It's really best to turn phantom power off, even with an XLR connector.

[Ahoy Hoy]

2 hours ago, H713 said:

I have always been of the philosophy that phantom power over any connector other than XLR is a scary idea for this very reason.

 

It's really best to turn phantom power off, even with an XLR connector.

I dont know how well you know the professional mixer space but theres a brand called DiGiCo. The thing with those mixing desk is the option to turn phantom power on and off is a few menus deep so its not instantly noticeable.
A sale rep for DiGiCo's Mac book kept dieing. Goes to apple says it keeps breaking. Apple genius people open the mac book up and the motherboard totally fried components throughout broken. They give him a replacement. Few weeks later dies again exact same. Apple guys joke about lighting striking twice gets him a replacement. 

On his fourth mac book he works out when he plugs his mac book in plays some audio and does his sales pitch showing off the menus he turns phantom power on and at the end when he takes his mac book away he unplugs the jack with phantom power on. Shorting the 48V phantom power to the ground of the macbook which goes throughout the laptop blowing up electrical components.

[The Flying Sloth]

4 hours ago, Ahoy Hoy said:

I dont know how well you know the professional mixer space but theres a brand called DiGiCo. The thing with those mixing desk is the option to turn phantom power on and off is a few menus deep so its not instantly noticeable.
A sale rep for DiGiCo's Mac book kept dieing. Goes to apple says it keeps breaking. Apple genius people open the mac book up and the motherboard totally fried components throughout broken. They give him a replacement. Few weeks later dies again exact same. Apple guys joke about lighting striking twice gets him a replacement. 

On his fourth mac book he works out when he plugs his mac book in plays some audio and does his sales pitch showing off the menus he turns phantom power on and at the end when he takes his mac book away he unplugs the jack with phantom power on. Shorting the 48V phantom power to the ground of the macbook which goes throughout the laptop blowing up electrical components.

Completely agree, phantom power on anything other than XLR is a nightmare, really annoys me when products do not have phantom controls on an easy to access channel by channel basis.

In saying that, never forget that Apple engineers are somehow stupid enough to design a product where the motherboard traces and SMT components blow before the fuses do.....

[H713]

This is nothing against DiGiCo consoles- they're as good as any digital console on the market (but IMO they're no XL4), but that kind of design is utterly stupid. When you bury that kind of thing in menus, that means people leave it on, and that's how stuff gets blown up. Best case scenario, it can make for one hell of a transient. Worst case scenario, somehow it gets connected to the input amplifier of some other piece of equipment and blows it up.

 

That said, Apple should absolutely know better. They know that their products are ubiquitous in the pro audio industry and they should absolutely recognize that there's a chance their product could see phantom power.

Furthermore, there really isn't much current available through phantom power, so it is NOT hard to implement clamps so this doesn't happen. The spec for phantom power is to connect pin 2 and pin 3 to the same +48V supply through a pair of 6K8 resistors. That works out to less than 8mA per side. If shorting the +48 to the Macbook's GROUND kills it, then we've got other design issues that should have been addressed.