6 ms·

Microphones

160 points by brudgers 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
roblh 4y ago
Those big old RCA ribbon mics like the 44 on the main page are way too cool. I’m privileged to own an old 77DX from the 60s and it’s very special. It’s always fun seeing music stuff on HN.
- 52-6F-62 4y ago
  Then you might appreciate this—Canadian songwriter Joel Plaskett recording the final (and 44th) track on his last album (44) with a 44 live on the floor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVGy8TAoxWo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVGy8TAoxWo Sounds just fantastic. (also into an old Neve desk and Studer machine. Can't hurt!)
Wistar 4y ago
This is a marvelous resource. Although I have no real use for them, I am fascinated by microphones and have been lucky enough to see some phenomenal microphone collections at various studios around the world.
sverhagen 4y ago
I remember when I volunteered at the little local radio station, that it was always working hard to soundproof booths, and putting carpet on the walls for acoustics, and scraping money together for decent microphones. Nowadays, when seeing webcasts of some radio shows, I'm surprised about the flimsy mics, sometimes headset-mics, they're using, and the sort of environments they do live shows from, without seemingly giving away much in terms of audio quality (for speech, announcements, that is). I get they're all behind sound processors, but still...
- 1-6 4y ago
  DSP's have a way of making analog devices obsolete. E.g. DSLR vs Smartphone wars. If you can't tell the difference, consumers will aim for cheap and microphones are no different. I'm still surprised that we run XLR cables and snakes all over stages. There should be CAT6 runs and cheap and open source Ultra Low-Latency tx/rx units by now.
  - ofalkaed 4y ago
    CAT6 would not last on stage for very long, even the robust heavy cable and connectors used on stage need to be regularly repaired and replaced. The expense for most of the stuff used on stage is in making it durable enough to have a decent lifespan. Stage life is very hard on gear.
    - dsr_ 4y ago
      Agreed: CAT6 ruggedized to the required degree would cost the same. Then you would need POE to power the ADC and DSP at the stage end, which would also need to deal with microphone interfaces which have remained compatible since 1950 -- so there's 73 and counting years of working equipment that people already have. You can get nearly all the benefit at the cabinet end of the cable runs.
    - datpiff 4y ago
      > CAT6 would not last on stage for very long, even the robust heavy cable and connectors used on stage need to be regularly repaired and replaced. The complexity of digital solutions doesn't help either. A huge amount of maintenance in current systems can be done with just a can of contact cleaner, an ohmmeter and a soldering iron. I can't imagine anyone wants to add problems with configuration, addressing, EMI etc.
  - kimburgess 4y ago
    As sibling comments have noted, there's durability issues with this for stage use, but this is absolutely the path that a lot of installed audio has gone: Dante/AES67/AVB mics, DSP's with minimal local IO and even direct PoE+ speakers. As an example collection: https://www.shure.com/en-ASIA/products/microphones/mxa920 https://www.shure.com/en-ASIA/products/microphones/mxa920 https://www.biamp.com/products/tesira-compact-audio-dsp https://www.biamp.com/products/tesira-compact-audio-dsp https://www.qsys.com/products-solutions/q-sys/audio-network-loudspeakers/nl-series/nl-c4/ https://www.qsys.com/products-solutions/q-sys/audio-network-...
- ofalkaed 4y ago
  It is not difficult to get good clean sound just about anywhere, just use a highly directional mic with poor sensitivity, which is what headset mics and the mics journalists use for field work are. It may not provide an accurate representation of the speakers voice and much of the nuance may be lost but often it is good enough especially when the listener does not actually know what the person sounds like. Many of the mics sold for pod casting are of this sort.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    > It is not difficult to get good clean sound just about anywhere, just use a highly directional mic with poor sensitivity… The "sensitivity" thing is a popular myth among podcasters. Headset mics use higher-sensitivity condenser mics, but because they're so close to your mouth, ambient and background noise is proportionately far quieter. More reading on this topic: • Myth Busted – The Too Sensitive Condenser Microphone: https://www.homebrewedmusic.com/2009/12/30/myth-busted-the-too-sensitive-condenser-microphone/ https://www.homebrewedmusic.com/2009/12/30/myth-busted-the-t... • 15 Popular Audio Myths (see section "Myth: Capacitor mics ‘pick up more of the room’ than dynamic mics"): https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/15-popular-audio-myths https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/15-popular-audio-m... • Top 8 Microphone Myths Exposed (see item 6, which also applies to dynamic vs. condenser): https://www.shure.com/en-US/performance-production/louder/top-8-microphone-myths-exposed https://www.shure.com/en-US/performance-production/louder/to...
    - ofalkaed 4y ago
      I was not talking about capsule types which you seem to be conflating with sensitivity. The 1khz/1Pa test is nearly useless on its own and generally in the studio when the engineer says this mic is more sensitive than that one, he is not talking about the sensitivity measurement on the box, he is talking about the sensitivity measurement in context of of the pattern and frequency response for a given setup. Edit: that is too say I was not talking about the sensitivity measurement on the box either.
prima-facie 4y ago
Somewhat offtopic: I really wish we had more websites like this one. We should make it easier for end users to learn how to build their own sites and host them, even if just as static pages. I've scraped numerous websites like these put together by university teachers, intended as learning material for students. Lots of the have now disappeared. They are crude and unpolished in the modern sense but the content they hold is invaluable. They are not bound by commercial motives and that's exactly what makes them special. The free-form of the medium also enables them to take whatever shape their creator envisages.
- Aachen 4y ago
  Dunno if we should teach more people to make sites like these https://snipboard.io/vAmURn.jpg https://snipboard.io/vAmURn.jpg (zoomed in for obviousness but I noticed it's blurry straight away) Generally I agree of course. My own site is hosted from a recycled laptop and weights a few kb per page. I don't post content just to have content and might go years between blogs, so no corporate publicity or ad revenue incentives. I miss sites like these, they're so hard to find nowadays.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Yeah, sites were every thing was a graphic so it's not "selectable" and searchable were all the rage in the days of Flash. how much more light weight could it be by removing an image and just having text and some CSS to style it? I didn't say some CSS library, so enough to style it.
    - javajosh 4y ago
      Adobe Flash (the player and authoring tool) was so good for the indie game scene! I'm pretty sure it was horrible for every other use-case, but back in the day Kongregate had some of the most interesting, inventive and well-done games I'd ever scene. I've never experienced so many novel game mechanics, and all because the barrier-to-entry was so low. I see why there was never any money in it for Adobe (btw valiant effort with Flex!) but the death of Flash still makes me sad for this reason alone.
jd3 4y ago
I was remember watching an old Dick Cavett clip on youtube back in 2020 and was captivated by the microphones they were wearing as necklaces around their neck while discussing the RFK assassination. I've been wondering its exact/name model number ever since I watched it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6pL8fE4Tm8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6pL8fE4Tm8
- Maursault 4y ago
  Make and model is tough, but they are among the class of lavalier microphones.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavalier_microphone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavalier_microphone
an_aparallel 4y ago
holy crap what a blast from the past, before i was working and bought gear, i'd just fawn over these mics and all the rack gear on the now defunct mercenary.com Thanks for the flashback!! :)
Certified 4y ago
Most speakers can operate as a microphone. You just operate them in reverse. Sound waves in a room move the speaker cone which in turn induces a voltage on the speaker coil as it vibrates. In most modern speakers the amplifier circuit gets in the way of making anything of it. "Passive" pc speakers that didn't have an amp used to be more common in the 90s. Usually a cheap set came with a new computer purchase. They didn't have the power/wall wart and ran solely off the power pumped out by your computers 3.5mm audio. My mind was blown when I found out as a young kid that you could plug these into the microphone port and record... from a speaker!
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
  pfft. now the clever hack is using your camera as your microphone.
  - kimburgess 4y ago
    Like this? http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic/ http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic/
  - squarefoot 4y ago
    Not a camera, but a cellphone potentially yes. The MEMS accelerometer contained in all phones is a device that turns position and acceleration (therefore vibrations) into digital values, so they could be sensitive to sound, especially when put on surfaces that resonate easily to ambient sounds and voice, like a table. Most if not all accelerometers are however sampled at much lower frequency than sound, then have their signals fed through a low pass filter, which could be either or both digital and analog, so in theory it is possible, still very hard to achieve without some deep hacking. However, if a cellphone was manufactured to allow it, then any app aware of this would have the ability to listen to sounds without involving the internal mic.
supernova87a 4y ago
What is amazing to me is that, just like cameras have become so accessible to the masses everywhere, cheap condenser microphones that do a pretty tolerable job are now within reach of everyone who can click on Amazon for $20. And unless you're really an audio snob or someone recording for archival / professional purposes, the $700-3000 microphones that were the reference standard of the past are no longer necessary to sound pretty good. (Maybe they're an aspirational equipment just like the big DSLRs are/were). The miracle of modern manufacturing.
- dividedbyzero 4y ago
  Trouble is figuring out which of the cheap ones are actually good. I went through several that were "meh" to garbage, now using a more expensive Elgato Wave3.
- jonathanstrange 4y ago
  "pretty tolerable" is a bit vague. $20 is too low for any recording project but you can get a decent microphone for around $100 nowadays. However, it's not going to sound good without a treated room (or emulating one in a closet, etc.).
  - datpiff 4y ago
    The $20 models are all marketed at podcasters, where the audio requirements are not super high. I think the explosion in podcasting has done more for lower prices than any big advancement in manufacturing.
- eternityforest 4y ago
  Mics are still pretty simple though. Cameras have all kinds of onboard computing, and often built-in mics are more advanced although lacking the quality you can only get with larger size. If mics advanced like cameras, wireless handhelds would have IR time of flight sensors that adjust the EQ to cancel out proximity effect, remove handling noise, and automatically detect feedback. They'd probably also have a tuner since they'd need a display anyway for all the extras, and they'd have modeling to pretend to be different mics built in. But at least VocoPro made decent wireless mics affordable.
getoffmyyawn 4y ago
This page is great and anyone who buys a microphone should really have a look at it first. Especially anyone who buys a side address mic[0]. There are so many people on YT who buy one and then position it incorrectly and speak into the wrong part of it, resulting in very poor quality recordings. 0. https://www.homebrewaudio.com/27738/podcasters-on-new-tv-show-using-yeti-mic-wrong/ https://www.homebrewaudio.com/27738/podcasters-on-new-tv-sho...
Connor_Creegan 4y ago
A vestige of the internet of my childhood. Wipes tear.

160 points by brudgers 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Those big old RCA ribbon mics like the 44 on the main page are way too cool. I’m privileged to own an old 77DX from the 60s and it’s very special. It’s always fun seeing music stuff on HN.

52-6F-62 4y ago
Then you might appreciate this—Canadian songwriter Joel Plaskett recording the final (and 44th) track on his last album (44) with a 44 live on the floor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVGy8TAoxWo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVGy8TAoxWo Sounds just fantastic. (also into an old Neve desk and Studer machine. Can't hurt!)

Wistar 4y ago

This is a marvelous resource. Although I have no real use for them, I am fascinated by microphones and have been lucky enough to see some phenomenal microphone collections at various studios around the world.

sverhagen 4y ago

I remember when I volunteered at the little local radio station, that it was always working hard to soundproof booths, and putting carpet on the walls for acoustics, and scraping money together for decent microphones. Nowadays, when seeing webcasts of some radio shows, I'm surprised about the flimsy mics, sometimes headset-mics, they're using, and the sort of environments they do live shows from, without seemingly giving away much in terms of audio quality (for speech, announcements, that is). I get they're all behind sound processors, but still...

1-6 4y ago
DSP's have a way of making analog devices obsolete. E.g. DSLR vs Smartphone wars. If you can't tell the difference, consumers will aim for cheap and microphones are no different. I'm still surprised that we run XLR cables and snakes all over stages. There should be CAT6 runs and cheap and open source Ultra Low-Latency tx/rx units by now.
- ofalkaed 4y ago
  CAT6 would not last on stage for very long, even the robust heavy cable and connectors used on stage need to be regularly repaired and replaced. The expense for most of the stuff used on stage is in making it durable enough to have a decent lifespan. Stage life is very hard on gear.
  - dsr_ 4y ago
    Agreed: CAT6 ruggedized to the required degree would cost the same. Then you would need POE to power the ADC and DSP at the stage end, which would also need to deal with microphone interfaces which have remained compatible since 1950 -- so there's 73 and counting years of working equipment that people already have. You can get nearly all the benefit at the cabinet end of the cable runs.
  - datpiff 4y ago
    > CAT6 would not last on stage for very long, even the robust heavy cable and connectors used on stage need to be regularly repaired and replaced. The complexity of digital solutions doesn't help either. A huge amount of maintenance in current systems can be done with just a can of contact cleaner, an ohmmeter and a soldering iron. I can't imagine anyone wants to add problems with configuration, addressing, EMI etc.
- kimburgess 4y ago
  As sibling comments have noted, there's durability issues with this for stage use, but this is absolutely the path that a lot of installed audio has gone: Dante/AES67/AVB mics, DSP's with minimal local IO and even direct PoE+ speakers. As an example collection: https://www.shure.com/en-ASIA/products/microphones/mxa920 https://www.shure.com/en-ASIA/products/microphones/mxa920 https://www.biamp.com/products/tesira-compact-audio-dsp https://www.biamp.com/products/tesira-compact-audio-dsp https://www.qsys.com/products-solutions/q-sys/audio-network-loudspeakers/nl-series/nl-c4/ https://www.qsys.com/products-solutions/q-sys/audio-network-...
ofalkaed 4y ago
It is not difficult to get good clean sound just about anywhere, just use a highly directional mic with poor sensitivity, which is what headset mics and the mics journalists use for field work are. It may not provide an accurate representation of the speakers voice and much of the nuance may be lost but often it is good enough especially when the listener does not actually know what the person sounds like. Many of the mics sold for pod casting are of this sort.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > It is not difficult to get good clean sound just about anywhere, just use a highly directional mic with poor sensitivity… The "sensitivity" thing is a popular myth among podcasters. Headset mics use higher-sensitivity condenser mics, but because they're so close to your mouth, ambient and background noise is proportionately far quieter. More reading on this topic: • Myth Busted – The Too Sensitive Condenser Microphone: https://www.homebrewedmusic.com/2009/12/30/myth-busted-the-too-sensitive-condenser-microphone/ https://www.homebrewedmusic.com/2009/12/30/myth-busted-the-t... • 15 Popular Audio Myths (see section "Myth: Capacitor mics ‘pick up more of the room’ than dynamic mics"): https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/15-popular-audio-myths https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/15-popular-audio-m... • Top 8 Microphone Myths Exposed (see item 6, which also applies to dynamic vs. condenser): https://www.shure.com/en-US/performance-production/louder/top-8-microphone-myths-exposed https://www.shure.com/en-US/performance-production/louder/to...
  - ofalkaed 4y ago
    I was not talking about capsule types which you seem to be conflating with sensitivity. The 1khz/1Pa test is nearly useless on its own and generally in the studio when the engineer says this mic is more sensitive than that one, he is not talking about the sensitivity measurement on the box, he is talking about the sensitivity measurement in context of of the pattern and frequency response for a given setup. Edit: that is too say I was not talking about the sensitivity measurement on the box either.

prima-facie 4y ago

Somewhat offtopic: I really wish we had more websites like this one. We should make it easier for end users to learn how to build their own sites and host them, even if just as static pages. I've scraped numerous websites like these put together by university teachers, intended as learning material for students. Lots of the have now disappeared. They are crude and unpolished in the modern sense but the content they hold is invaluable. They are not bound by commercial motives and that's exactly what makes them special. The free-form of the medium also enables them to take whatever shape their creator envisages.

Aachen 4y ago
Dunno if we should teach more people to make sites like these https://snipboard.io/vAmURn.jpg https://snipboard.io/vAmURn.jpg (zoomed in for obviousness but I noticed it's blurry straight away) Generally I agree of course. My own site is hosted from a recycled laptop and weights a few kb per page. I don't post content just to have content and might go years between blogs, so no corporate publicity or ad revenue incentives. I miss sites like these, they're so hard to find nowadays.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Yeah, sites were every thing was a graphic so it's not "selectable" and searchable were all the rage in the days of Flash. how much more light weight could it be by removing an image and just having text and some CSS to style it? I didn't say some CSS library, so enough to style it.
  - javajosh 4y ago
    Adobe Flash (the player and authoring tool) was so good for the indie game scene! I'm pretty sure it was horrible for every other use-case, but back in the day Kongregate had some of the most interesting, inventive and well-done games I'd ever scene. I've never experienced so many novel game mechanics, and all because the barrier-to-entry was so low. I see why there was never any money in it for Adobe (btw valiant effort with Flex!) but the death of Flash still makes me sad for this reason alone.

jd3 4y ago

I was remember watching an old Dick Cavett clip on youtube back in 2020 and was captivated by the microphones they were wearing as necklaces around their neck while discussing the RFK assassination. I've been wondering its exact/name model number ever since I watched it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6pL8fE4Tm8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6pL8fE4Tm8

Maursault 4y ago
Make and model is tough, but they are among the class of lavalier microphones.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavalier_microphone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavalier_microphone

an_aparallel 4y ago

holy crap what a blast from the past, before i was working and bought gear, i'd just fawn over these mics and all the rack gear on the now defunct mercenary.com Thanks for the flashback!! :)

Certified 4y ago

Most speakers can operate as a microphone. You just operate them in reverse. Sound waves in a room move the speaker cone which in turn induces a voltage on the speaker coil as it vibrates. In most modern speakers the amplifier circuit gets in the way of making anything of it. "Passive" pc speakers that didn't have an amp used to be more common in the 90s. Usually a cheap set came with a new computer purchase. They didn't have the power/wall wart and ran solely off the power pumped out by your computers 3.5mm audio. My mind was blown when I found out as a young kid that you could plug these into the microphone port and record... from a speaker!

IIAOPSW 4y ago
pfft. now the clever hack is using your camera as your microphone.
- kimburgess 4y ago
  Like this? http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic/ http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic/
- squarefoot 4y ago
  Not a camera, but a cellphone potentially yes. The MEMS accelerometer contained in all phones is a device that turns position and acceleration (therefore vibrations) into digital values, so they could be sensitive to sound, especially when put on surfaces that resonate easily to ambient sounds and voice, like a table. Most if not all accelerometers are however sampled at much lower frequency than sound, then have their signals fed through a low pass filter, which could be either or both digital and analog, so in theory it is possible, still very hard to achieve without some deep hacking. However, if a cellphone was manufactured to allow it, then any app aware of this would have the ability to listen to sounds without involving the internal mic.

supernova87a 4y ago

What is amazing to me is that, just like cameras have become so accessible to the masses everywhere, cheap condenser microphones that do a pretty tolerable job are now within reach of everyone who can click on Amazon for $20. And unless you're really an audio snob or someone recording for archival / professional purposes, the $700-3000 microphones that were the reference standard of the past are no longer necessary to sound pretty good. (Maybe they're an aspirational equipment just like the big DSLRs are/were). The miracle of modern manufacturing.

dividedbyzero 4y ago
Trouble is figuring out which of the cheap ones are actually good. I went through several that were "meh" to garbage, now using a more expensive Elgato Wave3.
jonathanstrange 4y ago
"pretty tolerable" is a bit vague. $20 is too low for any recording project but you can get a decent microphone for around $100 nowadays. However, it's not going to sound good without a treated room (or emulating one in a closet, etc.).
- datpiff 4y ago
  The $20 models are all marketed at podcasters, where the audio requirements are not super high. I think the explosion in podcasting has done more for lower prices than any big advancement in manufacturing.
eternityforest 4y ago
Mics are still pretty simple though. Cameras have all kinds of onboard computing, and often built-in mics are more advanced although lacking the quality you can only get with larger size. If mics advanced like cameras, wireless handhelds would have IR time of flight sensors that adjust the EQ to cancel out proximity effect, remove handling noise, and automatically detect feedback. They'd probably also have a tuner since they'd need a display anyway for all the extras, and they'd have modeling to pretend to be different mics built in. But at least VocoPro made decent wireless mics affordable.

getoffmyyawn 4y ago

This page is great and anyone who buys a microphone should really have a look at it first. Especially anyone who buys a side address mic[0]. There are so many people on YT who buy one and then position it incorrectly and speak into the wrong part of it, resulting in very poor quality recordings. 0. https://www.homebrewaudio.com/27738/podcasters-on-new-tv-show-using-yeti-mic-wrong/ https://www.homebrewaudio.com/27738/podcasters-on-new-tv-sho...

Connor_Creegan 4y ago

A vestige of the internet of my childhood. Wipes tear.