Microphones

Almost everyone knows what a microphone is and, on some basic level, how they work. Even if some people have a basic understanding of microphones and how they work, there’s a lot more to be learned about them that could help achieve your weekly goals. Even after having a couple of years experience in audio engineering, I hadn’t even grasped some of the basic concepts about microphones that would have helped me greatly. I had to learn these concepts by making mistakes and in some cases embarrassing myself. That said, in the upcoming sections I will discuss inputs and signal flow. This includes microphones and DI’s. I will also include some details and terms that will help you make an educated purchase, and give examples of equipment that people all over the world have used and that has been proven to be reliable. 

     

Simply put, microphones are transducers: a “device that converts input energy into output energy, the latter differing in kind but bearing a known relation to the output  ".  In audio, transducers most commonly convert energy between acoustic energy (e.g. a vocalist singing, an acoustic snare drum, a PA system) and electrical energy (the signal from source to PA).