Apogee Ensemble pops / DC spikes

[steve_awesome_wells]

Hi folks, first post from me.

A client/friend has an Apogee Ensemble which, WITH PHANTOM POWER OFF:

a) pops when bringing the preamp gains past the "20dB" setting (I was told this over the phone and I don't know to what exactly the "20dB" is referred). Apogee acknowledged this and say it relates to the closing of a relay.

and

b) also sends a DC spike at the same time. This Apogee have neglected to respond to, even though it has fried two ribbon mics.

The pop MAY be tolerable but clearly the voltage spike is not. Has anyone had a similar experience? Any suggestions? My friend is trying to get some info to present to a service tech but is in the bush and far from anyone which makes it difficult to get the unit on a bench. He and I would be very interested to learn if this is unique or known and if it is likely repairable. If it has something to do with phantom power he would rather have it permanently disabled.

In the meantime I've suggested using a cloudlifter, which is not much use as he hasn't got one!

I know this is a bit vague, but any guidance would be appreciated.

Thanks for the forum.

[Chris H]

I recently got a new lap top with Mac OS 10.8 and it's not working well with the Apogee Ensemble. After about 15 minutes it begins distorting. I still haven't sorted it out and from what i'm hearing a lot of people have gone back to the earlier OS