Phantom power and preamps

Steinberg Hardware
1

Hello there,

Last week I was recording vocals with my MR816X. Everything went and sounded fine until after some listening I wanted to do an extra overdub. Having already unplugged the AT2035 condenser I was using for recording the vocal, I made sure the phantom power on channel 1 was off. It wasn’t…and I’m sure it was off when I previously unplugged the mic. No sweat, I deactivated phantom power and plugged in the mic. All channel LED’s briefly blinked red…power surge??

Plugging in the mic and recording the vocal overdub resulted in a more harsh sounding vocal with less bottom end. I concluded something happened during the plugging in of the mic, and tested in on a colleague’s MR816X with the same cable. The mic sounded fine then. Testing it again on my own MR816X the harsness is again there, on every channel.

Is it technically possible my unit has suffered damage from this incident? Or would damage result in the preamps giving no output at all?

Am puzzled here…

2

I have, over the years plugged and unplugged all sorts of mics into all sorts of preamps with phantom power on and off and never damaged a preamp or mic.

Some ribbons may not like it, but it’s rare.

3

Thanks for the reply, mate. I’m aware of the ribbon issue…

I’m particularly curious about what the tech guys at Steinberg have to say about this. Guys?