ubizmo wrote:highland-piper wrote:ubizmo wrote:
But I discovered something else that surprised me: Some of these fairly inexpensive headset "Skype" microphones perform very well. They are dynamic mics,
Er, I hate to break it to you, but they're pretty much all electret condenser mics.
Really? I'm talking inexpensive, as in $25-$50. When I do a search for "headset condenser microphone" I come up with listings over $100. On the other hand, the listings for things like Logitech headset mics and the like don't mention having condenser microphones. But I freely confess to having no knowledge of these things. I was simply repeating something I read somewhere. Dynamic mics are said to be cheaper and more durable than condenser mics. At any rate, the headsets I've used have the virtue of not picking up every stray sound in the room, but recording the sound source near the mic on its little boom with admirable fidelity, considering the cost and simplicity. And I've only used the analog ones. My Windows 7 machine has some sort of feud going with USB headsets.
Ubizmo
All microphones are analog...
But yes, all those really cheap mics are all definitely electret condensers. They use capsules like the Panasonic WM-55. Cell phones too. They're very cheap capsules -- you can buy them in retail quantities for $3 or so, which is why you can buy a computer microphone on a boom for $6. If you have broken things with microphones you can take the mics out and put them into various housings.
Panasonic also makes omni-directional capsules, like the WM 60. The way they make them directional is by drilling holes in the back of the printed circuit board. The tradeoffs are frequency response and SPL. The omni-directional capsules have dead flat response from 20 hz to 20k hz (and you can record a train upclose and personal), while the uni-directional ones drop off the bass. For voice (or tin whistle) lack of bass is probably a benefit, because you won't hear trucks and trains (in the distance) rumbling past, and the volume isn't a problem.
I don't think I've seen a small, cheap dynamic mic in over 20 years. They used to put them in cassette recorders and stuff, but they're all electret's now (basically
Here's a good photo showing the back of a wm 55:
http://www.airraidsirens.com/posts/wm55a.html
If you take a microphone like this:
http://www.google.com/products/catalog? ... 8wIwADgA#p
and pop the top open you'll find something like that wm55 inside. If you put a dab of glue into each hole, you'll eliminate the directionality. If you google "microphone battery box" you can find out how (if you can solder) to make that microphone work at much higher SPLs -- probably not much use for tin whistle, but not bad for rock shows.
If you're interested, listen to this
sample. There is a studio condenser (MXL 990 -- us$50 retail) on the left, and a panasonic wm60 (the unidirectional version of what's in one of those skype microphones) on the right. The microphones were as close as possible to each other.
panasonic's data sheets for the wm55, wm64, and other currently produced microphone capsules (the wm60 referred to above is discontinued) are here:
http://www.panasonic.com/industrial/ele ... 00_AM.html