Quicksand Fans

To make the recent thunderstorm recording and a few others I have a microphone plugged directly into one of the microphone jacks on my computer. The mic itself has an on-off switch. My question, to anyone here with a knowledge of things audio, is this. How is it that even though the on-off switch on the mic itself is set to "off" the microphone still works? All I can think of is the mic must be drawing power from the computer itself and that is somehow by-passing the on-off switch. Or, I suppose, the switch could be broken and stuck in the "on" position but this does not seem at all likely as the same thing happens if I substitute another mic.

On/Off switches on modern devices aren't analog anymore, the PC they're plugged into can override them. Try playing with the settings in sound manager (little loud speaker icon in your windows task bar).

Mynock wrote:On/Off switches on modern devices aren't analog anymore, the PC they're plugged into can override them. Try playing with the settings in sound manager (little loud speaker icon in your windows task bar).

That must be it, although I thought the mic itself is analog, at least insofar as its power is concerned. The power HAS to be coming from the computer though because it even works with its battery completely removed.

In this case, the on/off switch is controlling access to the battery. Since your computer seems to be providing phantom power, the status, and indeed the presence, of the battery is irrelevant.