Microphones are used in many applications such astelephones, tape recorders, hearing aids, motion picture production, live and recordedaudio engineering, in radio and television broadcasting and in computers for recording voice, VoIP, and for non acoustic purposes such as ultrasonic checking.

A microphone is a device made to capture waves in air, water or hard material and translate them into an electrical signal. The most common method is via a thin membrane producing some proportional electrical signal. Most microphones in use today for audio use electromagnetic generation are dynamic microphones, capacitance change condenser microphones or piezoelectric generation to produce the signal from mechanical vibration.

Uses of different kinds of microphones
Condenser microphones span the range from cheap instruments to high quality instruments. They generally produce a high quality audio signal and are now the popular choice in laboratory and studio recording applications. They require a power source, provided generally from microphone inputs from a small battery.

Professional microphones often sport an external power supply for reasons of quality perception. Power is necessary for establishing the capacitor plate voltage, and is also needed for internal amplification of the signal to a useful output level. Condenser microphones are also available with two diaphragms, the signals from which can be electrically connected such as to provide a range of polar patterns such as cardioid and omnidirectional.

Carbon microphone, formerly used in telephone handsets, is a capsule containing carbon granules pressed between two metal plates. The carbon microphone can also be used as a type of amplifier, using a small amount of sound energy to produce a larger amount of electric energy. Carbon microphones were used as early telephone repeaters, making long distance phone calls possible in the era before vacuum tubes.

Crystal microphones used to be commonly supplied with vacuum tube or valve equipment such as domestic tape recorders. Their high output impedance matched well to the high input impedance of the vacuum tube input stage. They were difficult to match to early transistor equipments and were quickly supplemented by dynamic microphones for a short while, and later small eletret condenser devices. The high impedance of the crystal microphone made it very susceptable to handling noise, partly from the microphone itself, but also from handling of the connecting cable.

Shotgun microphones are high directional microphones. They have small lobes of sensitivity to the left, right, and rear but are significantly more sensitive to the front. This results from placing the elements inside a tube with slots cut along the side and wave cancellation eliminates most of the off axis noise. Shotgun microphones are commonly used on TV and film sets, and for field recording of wildlife.

Conclusion
The microphone is a ubiquitous piece of equipment and comes in a number of models. Found in everything from telephones to computers to recording studios, microphones are part of our daily life. It is perhaps the most critical part of the audio chain. A good quality microphone will provide the basis for excellent audio, whereas a poor quality will mean poor quality audio, no matter how good the rest of the system is.

About the Author: Victor Epand is an expert consultant for music gear, speakers, and microphones. You can find the best marketplace for music gear, speakers, and microphones at these 3 sites: music gear, music equipment, speakers, and different microphone models.
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All microphones convert sound energy into electrical energy, but there are many different ways of doing the job, using electrostatics, electromagnetism, piezo electric effects or even the change in resistance of carbon granules. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, tape recorders, hearing aids, motion picture production, live and recorded audio engineering, in radio and television broadcasting and in computers for recording voice, VoIP, and for non-acoustic purposes such as ultrasonic checking.

When it comes to microphones used in music recording or live performance the vast majority of microphones used are either capacitor or electrostatic or dynamic or electromagnetic models. Both types employ a moving diaphragm to capture the sound, but make use of a different electrical principle for converting the mechanical energy into an electrical signal. The efficiency of this conversion is very important, because the amounts of acoustic energy produced by the voices and the musical instruments are so small.

Dynamic Microphones
Dynamic microphones work via electromagnetic induction. They are robust, relatively inexpensive and resistant to moisture, and for this reason they are widely used on stage by singers. There are two basic types. The moving coil microphone and the ribbon microphone.

Dynamic microphones have the advantages of being relatively inexpensive and hard wearing, and they do not need a power supply or batteries to make them operate. A lightweight diaphragm, usually made of plastic film, is attached to a very small coil of wire suspended in the field of a permanent magnet. When a sound causes the diaphragm to vibrate, the whole assembly works as a miniature electricity generator, and a minute electric current is produced. Because the electrical output is so very small, it has to be amplified using a microphone preamp. Dynamic microphones are most effective when working with relatively loud sound sources that do not contain a lot of very high frequency details.

Capacitor Microphones
Capacitor microphones have been around for several decades, and although modern ones do incorporate a few small technical improvements, the sound character has actually changed very little. Some of the best sounding capacitor ones were designed over 20 years ago. The main part of the capacitor microphone contains a pair of conducting plates, one fixed and the other in the form of a moving diaphragm. When the spacing between the plates changes the capacitance varies, and if a fixed electrical charge is applied to the capacitor, an electrical signal is produced, which faithfully represents the diaphragm vibration.

Capacitors are more expensive than their dynamic counterparts, but they are also much more sensitive, and can capture high frequency detail much more accurately. Furthermore, the capacitor principle, unlike the dynamic principle, lends itself easily to the production of microphones with switchable pickup patterns, although the cheaper models tend to offer just a fixed Cardioid pattern.

Electret Microphones
An electret is a ferroelectric material that has been permanently electrically charged or polarized. An electret microphone is a relatively new type of capacitor microphone invented at Bell laboratories in 1962. A static charge is embedded in an electret by alignment of the static charges in the material, much the way a magnet is made by aligning the magnetic domains in a piece of iron. They are used in many applications, from high quality recording and lavalier use to built in microphones in small sound recording devices and telephones.

About the Author: Victor Epand is an expert consultant for music gear, speakers, and microphones. You can find the best marketplace for music gear, speakers, and microphones at these 3 sites: music gear, music equipment, speakers, and dynamic microphones, capacitor microphones, electret microphones.
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Microphones are commonly used in every stage performance, music concert, television program and such other events. Generally, during a performance, sound waves are captured in microphones with the help of diaphragm, which experience a vibration when the waves get initiated into the microphone. Finally the original sound is received after the vibrations get converted into electrical signals. Among various types of microphones, laser microphones are the exclusive ones, with latest technical features.

The technology of laser is quite interesting and a popular one. Laser microphones basically use the same technology while experimenting with the sound. They first of all detect the vibrations in a reflected laser beam and then convert them into audio signal. To say more, with the help of laser light, the laser microphones converts the acoustical sound waves to electrical signal, so that it can be processed and amplified for sound reproduction.

The laser beam that it has must be reflected off a glass window or any rigid surface, which will vibrate corresponding to the nearby sound. This microphone has the ability to turn any vibrating surface into a microphone just by measuring the space between itself and the surface. This is because, while doing so, the little fluctuations in the space become the electrical signal of the sound.

However, these types of microphones are designed in a typical way. The outer housing, which is cylindrical in shape, has spaced opening so that the sound waves can enter. There is also an inner housing, which too is cylindrical in shape and is positioned centrally inside the outer one. Then, to project the laser light into the space between the outer and the inner housing and a detector to receive the laser light that modulates the sound and produce electrical signals out of the waves entering the outer housing.

The laser in the laser microphones is capable of measuring the accurate distance between itself and the surface where it is bouncing off, so in this way it can measure the fluctuation of that surface with the vibration of the sound waves. However, these kinds of microphones are used in movies as spy equipments.

Besides this, there are other types of microphones too. Like, there are lavaliere microphones, contact microphones, parabolic microphones, which are generally used for musical purpose and are in demand. Among all these, the laser microphones are the latest ones but quite expensive and point to be noted is that it is not very portable.

The best feature of the laser microphones is that it provides realistic and distortion free sound that usually was a problem with the older form of mics. Infact, the use of laser beams for sound reproduction has solved many technical problems. In the earlier forms there was only one sound channel that usually received sound from one direction. But the newest forms of microphones like the laser ones have multiple sound channels, which produce sound that are much more realistic and amazing. These types of microphones are even used in movies to give special sound effect.

About the Author: Victor Epand is an expert consultant for music gear, speakers, and microphones. You can find the best marketplace for music gear, speakers, and microphones at these 3 sites: music gear, music equipment, speakers, and laser microphones, parabolic microphone.
Source: http://www.articlesbase.com