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How Microphones Work

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This lesson is from my Revision3 Show titled ‘Your Weekly Music Lesson with Walt‘. This week we learned ‘how Microphones Work’.

So check out the Video below! Microphones are an example of a transducer. A transducer converts energy from one form to another. So in this example they convert acoustical energy (sound waves) into electrical energy (the audio signal).

Interesting though, is that the microphone literally mimics the human ear.

To do this, microphones have a thin piece of material called a diaphragm, which vibrates when it is struck by sound waves. These vibrations are converted into an electrical current which becomes the audio signal.

Microphone levels, not surprisingly, are actually quite small. They’re leveled in millivolts. The thing is that these levels are so minute, that they need to be amplified. This signal is then transmitted to output devices, which reproduce the original sound wave and reinforce it. Typical output devices for microphones are power amplifiers, sound mixers, PA systems and audio recorders.

Microphones can be classified by three types of pickup patterns: unidirectional or cardioid, bidirectional or figure 8, omnidirectional or boundary and switchable. I don’t want to get too confused on this, so I’ll just save that for my next post :)

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http://www.angryfolk.com Stu

Like your show, but you said something I have to take issue with. You said microphones convert signal from analog to digital. This is incorrect. Microphones convert sound vibrations to variations in current in the microphone capsule.

They are still analog signals. AD/DA converters change signals from analog to digital (bits).

Yeah, it’s nit picky.

Great show otherwise.
http://www.angryfolk.com Stu

Like your show, but you said something I have to take issue with. You said microphones convert signal from analog to digital. This is incorrect. Microphones convert sound vibrations to variations in current in the microphone capsule.

They are still analog signals. AD/DA converters change signals from analog to digital (bits).

Yeah, it’s nit picky.

Great show otherwise.
http://www.waltribeiro.net Walt

Stu, good point. I stand corrected :)
http://www.waltribeiro.net Walt

Stu, good point. I stand corrected :)
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http://twitter.com/benway1 Carl

Awesome! Thanks heaps Walt. I think you get the concept across well enough though, and the idea of an audio feedback loop is exciting.
http://twitter.com/benway1 Carl

Awesome! Thanks heaps Walt. I think you get the concept across well enough though, and the idea of an audio feedback loop is exciting.