If you have checked my Instagram page, you may have noticed we had a worship night with the band Devotion (which I am in) last Sunday. It seemed a good idea to share a problem we encountered that very evening. Phantom power for microphones and our JamHub monitoring.

For a while now, our band has a JamHub, so we can each create our own monitor mix. This way we are not dependent on the sound guy for our monitor mix, for which we sometimes had to share monitor speakers. The JamHub was the ideal solution for us and with some research we found that we could use it for live music as well. With the help of DI boxes and splitters, we can split the signal from our instruments and microphones; one for the JamHub and one for the PA.

We have an acoustic drum kit and if everyone has headphones or earbuds for the monitor mix, the drum kit and the crowd are sometimes hard to hear. That is why we  have two microphones; one for the drum kit and one for the crowd. These microphones require Phantom power to work properly. Unfortunately, we already found out the hard way, that you can not enable phantom power on both the JamHub and PA mixer. The JamHub can not handle this (the microphone input will break). So, what to do then? Only turn on phantom power on the JamHub. But now the DI boxes do not have power anymore. Luckily they can work on battery power, so it’s solved!

Not entirely. If we use this setup with a Shure Beta 58 microphone, the microphone sounds very tinny. However, if we disconnect the link-out from the DI box, it sounds normal again. Also if we disable the phantom power on the JamHub, it sounds normal again. Other microphones do work using this setup though, which is a bit odd.

Unfortunately I can not  give you an answer yet on how you can solve this, because we are still searching for a solution. But as soon as I know the solution, I’ll let you know!

Stay in tune!