... and say WELCOME to the club...
Thanks! I look forward to having fun and learning things from this forum, which no doubt will enhance this new hobby of mine. Never thought of measuring the phantom power supply (nor any bench testing in general) until I "discovered" this forum.
Just did some quick measurements on the Tascam DR-100 which I pre-ordered a couple of weeks ago and arrived yesterday, and the results are a bit surprising:
- The phantom supply was exactly 48.0v with no load. Then I shorted pins #1,2, & 3 on XLR input #1 (measured current draw = 14.6 mA), and shorted pins #1&2 on the XLR input #2 (measured current draw = 7.3 mA, for a total current draw of 21.9 mA), the voltage was rock solid at exactly 48.0V
- At the "High" sensitivity setting, the DR-100’s EIN was a couple of dB better than the Ediroal R-44 EXCEPT at exactly 12,000 Hz where there was a spike as high as 15 dB above the noise floor everywhere else. This spike may be due to electrically noisy environment near my test bench, which induced the spike in the 150 Ohm resistor that I used to terminate the XLR input. There was also a minor spike at 60 Hz, which I was able to trace back to the compact fluorescent light that I was using – the spike was gone after I turned off the light. Will repeat the test at my work place shortly.
- At both the “Mid” and “Low” sensitivity settings, the spike at 12,000 Hz was much lower, and the Tascam DR-100’s EIN was a couple of dB better than the Edirol R-44, even if the spike was taken into account.
Overall, I am very happy with both the Edirol R-44 and the Tascam DR-100, based on audio tests (mostly recordings of piano music) - I have very good ears, particularly in terms of tones.