Ditto. I read the whole thing.

Fred, Just to add to what Steve said: I have at AT897 which gives hotter output on 48v phantom power from my Sony Z1U than it does using the internal battery. So I know first hand that the phantom voltage definitely affects the output of the mic.

I stand by my comment. The mic will perform better with 48v than 12v phantom power.

~jr

No, my first hand experience is that it won't. And your first hand exprerience doesn't contradict that. What you learned is that 1.5V battery operation vs. 48V phantom operation definitely affects the output of the AT897.

1.5V battery power is pretty low, they probably couldn't compensate for that with the circuitry. And that's why AT specs two different sensitivities for the AT897, one for 11-48V phantom, and a lower one for battery--consistent with your experience.

They only spec one sensitivity for the AT3031--consistent with my experience.

And for the record I won't dispute your experience either, placing myself in the position of a mugwump, sitting firmly on the fence with my mug on one side and my wump on the other <grin>. While I've got a couple of 3031s, I only have sources of 48v phantom so I can't test them with other voltages in order to resolve the matter one way or the other.

No problem Steve--it's already been resolved. ;>)

You are correct, I was extrapolating one experience with low voltage for another. I don’t personally own any phantom power units that are not 48v so perhaps my observation in one low voltage scenario doesn’t hold true for the other. I stand corrected.

~jr

Thanks, John. And no one is completely wrong here. Just to round out the discussion I checked with Audio Technica. Their reply was that if the phantom power for one of their mics is specified at 11-52 then all the performance parameters are good for that range of voltage.

However, they do have some mics (AT4051 and AT4053 for example) that are spec'd for 48V. Those mics will suffer at less than 48V. There are probably many models of other brands out there that will also.