rob aylestone
Moderator
A few mewsings that entered my head. When you listen to a ribbon mic - the circuit is very simple. A thin bit of foil, almost a short circuit - a transformer (more wire and an air gap) and that is it. You can get a bit of foil, run it through a home made corrugator (made from mechano gears maybe) and clamp it under the terminals. You can have the corrugations very zig zag or pull them out a bit. All that changes is the tone - changes to the frequency response. Nothing really else you can do. Maybe the foil itself could be swapped, but all that happens is the frequency response changes again.
Dynamic mics are more complex. A coil of wire that is bonded to a diaphragm. Far more interaction - and the diameter of the coil, the wire cross section, how the wire escapes the area, the diaphragm size, material, weight, plus maybe a transformer. The end result is a frequency response plot - but so many factors now have an impact. how quickly the coil moves in the gap from stationary to full speed then how quickly it slows down - down to the diaphragm and how it is physically suspended.
Proper condensers (cannot say capacitors) are more like the ribbon. A circle of conductive material insulated from what holds it taut. usually with a nut and bolt and a wire in the middle. Then a gap, then a back plate, or another film of the conductive material, this time attached to the metal structure at the edges.
Then some electronics to convert the change in capacitance to changes in a voltage.
Of course, some electronics designs will be sonically superior, but the killer is how well the diaphragm follows the audio exciting it. In the Neumann videos you see some amazingly skilled humans doing this. The important features seem to be the tension in the membrane, and the nut and bolt connection in the centre.
I can see that the dynamic has the most scope for sound differences - so many individual processes where sound can be impacted. The condenser mic elements are really simple. The difficulty is making them - I found this Russian video
youtube link
German and Russian factories drill hundreds of holes by hand - in China, it's a CNC machine. video here That indicates consistent quality but far cheaper.
I suppose the point I am trying to make is that the electronics differences make far less difference to the sound, than the capsules do? Rode, Neumann, Soyuz are labour intensive processes - so an extra tweak on the nut and bolt will change the tone. If the mechanics are done right, you get a nice product. The cheap condensers (screening out the genuinely awful ones) only have to get the capsule right to be sought after. A nice capsule in a body made from old plumbing pipes will sound great.
Nobody ever takes a diaphragm out of an expensive mic and does a capsule by capsule comparison - that would be crazy, but it really is that one component that is the critical one. Wouldn't it be interesting to have a real shootout with the capsules only? Is it the Neumann capsule that really matters? I know some folk change resistors and capacitors in the preamps to improve them - but are these electronic improvements really valid - or do they just tweak the frequency response in the same way EQ would?
Dynamic mics are more complex. A coil of wire that is bonded to a diaphragm. Far more interaction - and the diameter of the coil, the wire cross section, how the wire escapes the area, the diaphragm size, material, weight, plus maybe a transformer. The end result is a frequency response plot - but so many factors now have an impact. how quickly the coil moves in the gap from stationary to full speed then how quickly it slows down - down to the diaphragm and how it is physically suspended.
Proper condensers (cannot say capacitors) are more like the ribbon. A circle of conductive material insulated from what holds it taut. usually with a nut and bolt and a wire in the middle. Then a gap, then a back plate, or another film of the conductive material, this time attached to the metal structure at the edges.
Then some electronics to convert the change in capacitance to changes in a voltage.
Of course, some electronics designs will be sonically superior, but the killer is how well the diaphragm follows the audio exciting it. In the Neumann videos you see some amazingly skilled humans doing this. The important features seem to be the tension in the membrane, and the nut and bolt connection in the centre.
I can see that the dynamic has the most scope for sound differences - so many individual processes where sound can be impacted. The condenser mic elements are really simple. The difficulty is making them - I found this Russian video
youtube link
German and Russian factories drill hundreds of holes by hand - in China, it's a CNC machine. video here That indicates consistent quality but far cheaper.
I suppose the point I am trying to make is that the electronics differences make far less difference to the sound, than the capsules do? Rode, Neumann, Soyuz are labour intensive processes - so an extra tweak on the nut and bolt will change the tone. If the mechanics are done right, you get a nice product. The cheap condensers (screening out the genuinely awful ones) only have to get the capsule right to be sought after. A nice capsule in a body made from old plumbing pipes will sound great.
Nobody ever takes a diaphragm out of an expensive mic and does a capsule by capsule comparison - that would be crazy, but it really is that one component that is the critical one. Wouldn't it be interesting to have a real shootout with the capsules only? Is it the Neumann capsule that really matters? I know some folk change resistors and capacitors in the preamps to improve them - but are these electronic improvements really valid - or do they just tweak the frequency response in the same way EQ would?
