Gear / Technical Help > Battery Boxes, Preamps, Mixers, ADCs, and Processors

Impact of marginal batteries?

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loughney:
Back in November, I taped a show and when I opened the file at home, I noticed that the wave form started to become unequal, see attached image, with the red box indicating the area that I am talking about.  On Jan 1st, I taped the same band, same venue, same recording location and didn't have the issue.  I did change my battery box battery, and now just checked the old battery and the battery meter shows that the power level is marginal.  I'm assuming that is the source of the problem.  Anyone else have this type of experience or know if my hunch is the right one?

vanark:
Yep, definitely could be due to a low battery issue.

nulldogmas:
I have absolutely had that happen to me — sometimes one channel gradually drops, then the other.

fireonshakedwnstreet:
Looks right. My MixPre would have a lower signal when the batteries were giving out.

morst:
Sure thing. Used the Beyer MV100 for many years on two alkaline 9-volt cells, and after about 5 hours powering the KM140 pair, this was the risk.
I never made it past approximately 5.5 hours with useful output, unless I changed the batteries.
As the voltage drops, the gain gets lower and lower until you can't hear the signal from the noise!
Note also on your graphic that the positive excursions of peaks are less affected by the loss than the negative excursions.
The MV100 did this as voltage dropped.

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