Quick R-4 phantom question...say you have a XLR board patch - can you still turn phantom on?
This seems like potential problem...wasnt there a Govt Mule gig a few years ago that was nearly canceled cuz some dude turned his phantom power on and blew up the board?
phantom power can be turned on and off on the R-4, but only for channels 1&2 or channels 3&4 not for each channel individually. As far as I understand it phantom should NEVER be on when taking a board patch with any device including the r-4 unless you want to fry the board.
this is correct - turning phantom on would send 48v back to the board and fry it
Although you should never send phantom back into the SBD, I believe most good soundboards would easily block it these days. You don't have to fry too many SBDs before the manufacturers figure out they need to protect against it -- not just from tapers patching but from whatever else might happen, cause eventually it will, lol. But, I don't really know, I'm just saying, makes sense to me to not send phantom if you don't have to (same goes for Ribbons BTW, lol).
Also, being able to switch phantom individually on the R44 is one improvement I noticed immediately from the pics, that and those 4 RCA outs were nice tweaks too. Other than that, it looks to be a smaller flash version of the R4 pro without the timecode.