Microphones

Although microphones are hardware, we publish an own article about this topic, as there is so much to know.

There are many different kinds of microphones available. To give you a brief overview and provide the beginners (which we all have been!!) with additional information.
This is to give you some background information and hopefully it helps you understand several microphone systems we show on this website.

We show some examples on this page, but we will NEVER demand, that the shown microphones are "THE ONLY ONES" and you will get a great sound only, if you buy exactly these microphones. 

Small Diaphragm Condenser microphones  (SDC)

Since coherence is important in most microphone systems, SDCs are typically used. That is the reason we utilize them most of the time, not least because they are not too weighty.

These microphones have different patterns and they are named "cardioid", "hypercardioid", "supercardioid" and "figure-of-eight". If you want to learn more about this important details, please look at THIS page. In our context, we use all patterns and always for good reasons.

Using a very cheap or a very expensive microphone does not affect how the systems work.Of course, the higher the quality of your microphones, the better the results, but a cheap microphone may be sufficient to start with.
If you find that you need higher quality for your recordings later on, you can simply replace your existing microphones.
You may need to adjust the levels here and there, but everything will essentially work right away.

Large Diaphragm Condenser microphones (LDC)

We will show you some microphone systems where we will use such microphones. It depends on the purpose, but generally spoken one can build (almost) any microphone system like we show with the SDC. 
As you may expect, they will sound differently, but this may be an advantage, if done the right way.

The main advantage of some higher priced LDCs is, that you can change their patterns by a switch. This makes them very flexible. Especially when you are trying something out or want to test different setups, this is a great advantage.

The downside is, these kind of microphones is not only bigger in size, but also more expensive.

Dynamic microphones

Due to their different principles of converting sound energy into electrical energy, they are distinguished from condenser microphones.
Dynamic microphones are particularly suitable for sounds that are quite loud (pneumatic hammer) and/or have quite low frequencies.
Again, there is no “right” or “wrong” choice. However, dynamic microphones are not always the first choice for very quiet and rather high-frequency signals.

Contact microphones

Contact microphones are not part of the ambisonic field by nature. We often use them to supplement and enrich interesting soundscapes. That's why they are mentioned here.

Imagine a horde of horsemen riding across a medieval battlefield, attacking the enemy with all their might.
Adding an additional LFE channel (strong de-corelated) with an omni microphone already creates an impressive soundscape. But when you add the low frequencies of ground vibrations using a contact resp. geofone-microphone, it not only sounds great, it sounds colossal. You'll hear the screams, the clanging of swords, and the other sounds of battle. Not just in stereo, but all around you. 
And now imagine if the subwoofers had to go down to 30 or even 20 Hz, and then there was enough power in the amplifiers to drive them.
Can you feel it? Can you feel that presence?  – Yeah! – That's exactly what we're talking about. ...
... and that's why we always have at least one contact resp. geofone microphones with us. No more, but also no less.