STUDIO MICROPHONE TYPES

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STUDIO MICROPHONE TYPES

  What you are recording may in fact dictate what type of microphone you might need to use, but it can be even more detailed than that. You must think about several things when it comes to choosing a microphone such as sound pressure levels (SPL), side bleeding of unwanted noise, and weather you want a mono or stereo recordings.

Some common types that you will use the most often are the condenser, ribbon, and the dynamic microphones. Here is a quick run down of what the three types are, and what they work best for.

Condenser microphones

1. Condenser Microphones performance are affected by climate and temperature
2. Condenser microphones can have extended low and high frequencies
3. Top condenser microphones can be expensive
4. Cheaper condenser microphones can lack in frequency response and performance
5. Condenser microphones need internal power from a battery to operate or external power from phantom power

Within the condenser microphone family tree the tree breaks down into two major types, the large diaphragm and the small diaphragm condenser microphones. The diaphragm is the piece that air moves in order to make an electrical current.

To begin I feel it is important to know what the microphones can actualy hear, or often times more importantly; what they can’t hear. This is what we sometimes call the polar pattern of a microphone. The term “polar pattern" speaks about the direction (outward from the microphone itself) that a microphone can hear.  

The most common polar patterns are cardioid, hyper cardioid, omni, and figure eight.

But what do these microphone terms mean, and how can knowing these terms help in your recordings? What is this information good for? Well, knowing what you do not want to record is just as valuable as knowing what you do want to record.

Well, let’s start off this quick explanation with the cardioid polar pattern microphone. To be more specific, it details the width of an area that the microphone can hear. A cardioid microphones’ “hearing”, or polar pattern looks like the image below.

cardioid

 Sound enters the cardioid microphone easiest from the front, less from the sides, and not at all from the rear. The ring arround the microphone in the image above shows this directional concept. 

 hypercardioid

You can see how a Hyper Cardioid microphone might come in handy for picking up just one piece of a drum kit and not allow any sound (bleed) from the other pieces of the drum kit to enter into the microphone. An omni polar pattern microphone might be great for picking up a 360 degree “room sound”, or a group of back up vocalists standing in a circle around the microphone.

wide cardioid

 Wide cardioid mic`s are in general like hypercardioid but with larger range of signal that can be projected from the back of it

bi directional

 A “bi directional” microphone polar pattern is named so due to its look on a diagram. See the diagram below to see what I mean. Sound enters these microphones from two directions, which are also at opposite directions. You can set one of these microphones up so that sound enters from the front and the rear, or at opposing sides. These microphones are great for picking up a rooms’ deflection of sound, creating a rooms' deflection, reverb, or delay effect.

and omni directional

But what if you need to pick up a sound source that is in a 360 degree space? An “omni” directional microphone hears in all directions, and can handle some amazing reverb like effects, and some very cool sounds! You can see the “omni” polar pattern in the image below…

A mic can also be either a mono or a stereo mic, which is actually two microphones in one. The detailed list goes on to include such internal workings of microphones such as a tube or a solid state microphone, phantom powered, and some mics may even have “EQ-ing” features such as a low frequency (LF) roll-off and/or a high frequency (HF) roll off pot.

The inner workings of most condenser microphones are a pair of conducting plates that make up the diaphragm. When moving air moves the plates of the diaphragm, an electrical current is made. When compared to dynamic microphones inner workings, condenser microphones are more sensitive due to the fact that they are more efficient in their movement. They simply require less sound pressure in order to make them work.

There are two sizes of condenser microphones available because of the type of sound that they can capture. A large diaphragm condenser microphone can work great for vocal work because of their warm sound. Small-diaphragm models tend to be chosen where a very high accuracy of representation of a sound is required.

Ribbon microphones

(ribbon velocity microphone)

1. Flat Frequency Response
2. Usually expensive
3. Requires care during use and transporting
4. They do not need Internal or External power to use
5. Better high frequency response verses the Dynamic Microphone

 Ribbon microphones are almost identical to the dynamic microphone but uses a thin piece of aluminum electrical conducive ribbon foil. These microphones are usually bidirectional, which picks up sound equally from both sides.  It has a quick response to sound waves and picks up higher frequencies a lot better. 

The downfall of older Ribbon microphone is it has a weaker output level and is more fragile to use. Too loud of a signal can damage the foil inside the casing causing it to pop like a blown light bulb.  Modern ribbon microphones are more durable and can output a stronger signal due to better technology and improved magnates and transformer designs. 

Due to its smoother frequency response, the mid frequencies have a better sounding characteristic verses the dynamic microphone.

Ribbon microphones are commonly used to record cymbals, bass guitars, grand pianos and electric and acoustic guitars. Brass instruments sound really good recorded with a Ribbon microphone as well.

Because of the sensitive nature of the thin aluminum foil inside the ribbon microphone, make sure the phantom power is in the off position before inputting a ribbon microphone into the audio board, having the phantom power on is a sure way to damage the ribbon microphone aluminum strip.

Well, here is your chance to save some of your cash!

There are microphones out there that have polar pattern switching available on the microphones themselves! This allows for a wide range of recording applications from just one microphone. Microphones that are capeable of switching its polar pattern tend to be a little more expensive, and the cost increases as the number of switch-able patterns increases. However, purchasing a microphone with variable polar pattern switching might be cheaper than purchasing as many different types of microphones.

One more thing to explain 

“Bleed” is what we call any unwanted noise that enters a microphone from an unwanted direction. Perhaps it is as simple as a snare microphone picking up “bleed” from the guitar amp that is off in the distance. When the microphone is solo'd, the guitar amp can be heard along with the snare through the snares' microphone. This can muddy up a session.

We can control “bleed” by choosing a microphone that ignores, or rejects noise coming from certain directions  that Enter into polar patterns of microphones.