DM channel Three is dead...or barely alive

[TascMan]

Last night I had a client over to record his drum track to a new album I am engineering. When we were doing sound checks, I was not getting anything on DM Channel 3. I had the snare bottom mic (Audix i5 via mogami) plugged in to this channel. For the sake of time, I recorded without it. He was happy and went home. Today I wanted to hunt down the problem. I immediately expected the usual stuff...loose jack, bad cable, loose insert plug within the patchbay, etc. So, I plugged the same mic, and it's cable, into my other preamps and it sounds fine and normal. I pulled out the insert jack and plugged directly into the XLR input on Channel 3, and it's terrible sounding.
It requires me to turn the gain knob all the way up to get a signal, and when I do, it sounds muffled and distorted. I made a quick mp3 0f the issue, but just remembered, we can't upload and audio files to the board.

 

[captdan]

Is the Audix a .48v condenser? Could this be phantom power related?
If it isn't, do both the 1/4" and XLR inputs exhibit the problem?
Could there, perhaps, be a short or foreign matter in one of the ports? Have you tried cleaning them (ideally with DeOxit)?

Is the problem limited to only one input, or are neighboring inputs affected?

Hopefully, it isn't a bad board but something simple (I know - you DID assign the channel to the Stereo Bus, right? ) (I had to ask).

I hope you solve this inexpensively and quickly.

CaptDan

 

[TascMan]

Thanks for the reply Dan. The Audix i5 is a dynamic, similar in sound to a 57. So no, this is not a phantom power problem. Also, the adjacent channels work fine and, yes, I do have it sent out to my stereo bus. I CAN hear it, when cranked, it's just muffled and distorted. I haven't tried the 1/4" line input though. I will report on that in a minute.

 

[TascMan]

Yea!! Problem adverted! Fixed.
The issue was that I have the first eight channels of the DM being sent out and returning back in via unbalanced "Y" insert cables running into/out of Normalled patch points in my patch bay. Apparently, I have the patch point set to "thru" by accident for channel 3. This is why I heard nothing at all last night. I tried pulling out the 1/4" "Y" cable out of the back of the DM to not use it, but I had inadvertently allowed that 1/4" plug to slip partially into the line in jack, which messed with my mic input signal.
I cleared it all and am now back to good old fashioned DM pre clarity. Yea!!

 

[captdan]

Well, I guess you have to chalk that one up to another 'routing issue.'

CaptDan