Q: Are microphones used in many applications such as telephones? ¶
A: Yes, and hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and public events, motion picture production, live and recorded audio engineering, sound recording, two-way radios, megaphones, radio and television broadcasting, and in computers for recording voice, speech recognition, VoIP, and for non-acoustic purposes such as ultrasonic sensors or knock sensors.
Q: Is a microphone a type of capacitor microphone invented by Gerhard Sessler and Jim West at Bell laboratories in 1962? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Are microphones low impedance? ¶
A: Yes, and about 200 Ω or lower.
Q: Are microphones electret types? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Is a microphone the primary source of differences in directivity? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Is a microphone a function of frequency? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Is a microphone often used for broadcast applications or field recording where it would be impractical to configure two separate condenser microphones in a classic X-Y configuration for stereophonic recording? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Are microphones generally scalar sensors of pressure? ¶
A: Yes, they exhibit an omnidirectional response, limited only by the scattering profile of their physical dimensions.
Q: Are microphones designed not to have their impedance matched by the load they are connected to? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Are microphones of this pattern? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Are microphones often portrayed in movies as spy gadgets? ¶
A: Yes, because they can be used to pick up sound at a distance from the microphone equipment.
Q: Was a microphone built? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Is a microphone a device that uses a laser beam and smoke or vapor to detect sound vibrations in free air? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Was a microphone introduced, another electromagnetic type, believed to have been developed by Harry F? ¶
A: Yes, Olson, who essentially reverse-engineered a ribbon speaker.
Q: Are microphones often referred to using the designations "Class 1," "Type 2" et? ¶
A: Yes, and ften referred to using the designations "Class 1," "Type 2" etc.
Q: Are microphones often 1/4" in diameter"? ¶
A: Yes, and which practically eliminates directionality even up to the highest frequencies.
Q: Are microphones preferred over high impedance for two reasons: one is that using a high-impedance microphone with a long cable results in high frequency signal loss due to cable capacitance? ¶
A: Yes, and which forms a low-pass filter with the microphone output impedance.
Q: Were microphones once considered low quality? ¶
A: Yes, and the best ones can now rival traditional condenser microphones in every respect and can even offer the long-term stability and ultra-flat response needed for a measurement microphone.
Q: Is a microphone called its element or capsule? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Are microphones exceptions? ¶
A: Yes, and due to the designers' assumption of a certain load impedance being part of the internal electro-acoustical damping circuit of the microphone.
Q: Are microphones variants of the condenser microphone design? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Are microphones also available with two diaphragms that can be electrically connected to provide a range of polar patterns? ¶
A: Yes, such as cardioid, omnidirectional, and figure-eight.
Q: Were microphones once commonly supplied with vacuum tube equipment? ¶
A: Yes, such as domestic tape recorders.
Q: Are microphones robust? ¶
A: Yes, and resistant to environmental changes in heat and moisture, and can be produced for any directionality or impedance matching.
Q: Are microphones not typically used for standard recording applications? ¶
A: Yes, because they tend to have poor low-frequency response as a side effect of their design.
Q: Is a microphone effectively a superposition of an omnidirectional and a figure-8 microphone? ¶
A: Yes, for sound waves coming from the back, the negative signal from the figure-8 cancels the positive signal from the omnidirectional element, whereas for sound waves coming from the front, the two add to each other.
Q: Is a microphone similar? ¶
A: Yes, but with a slightly larger figure-8 contribution leading to a tighter area of front sensitivity and a smaller lobe of rear sensitivity.
Q: Is a microphone similar to a hyper-cardioid? ¶
A: Yes, and except there is more front pickup and less rear pickup.
Q: Is a microphone made in high and low impedance versions? ¶
A: Yes, and the high impedance version has a higher output voltage for a given sound pressure input, and is suitable for use with vacuum-tube guitar amplifiers, for instance, which have a high input impedance and require a relatively high signal input voltage to overcome the tubes' inherent noise.
Q: Are microphones commonly used as vocal or speech microphones? ¶
A: Yes, since they are good at rejecting sounds from other directions.
Q: Is a microphone made for hands-free operation? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Is a microphone the difference in SPL between the noise floor and the maximum SPL? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Is a microphone oriented relative to the diagrams depends on the microphone design? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Are microphones scalar transducers responding to pressure from any direction? ¶
A: Yes, and bi-directional microphones are vector transducers responding to the gradient along an axis normal to the plane of the diaphragm.
Q: Is a microphone not infinitely small and? ¶
A: Yes, as a consequence, it tends to get in its own way with respect to sounds arriving from the rear, causing a slight flattening of the polar response.
Q: Were microphones developed by several companies? ¶
A: Yes, and most notably RCA that made large advancements in pattern control, to give the microphone directionality.
Q: Are microphones replaced by a permanent charge in an electret material? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Are microphones intended for testing speakers? ¶
A: Yes, and measuring noise levels and otherwise quantifying an acoustic experience.
Q: Are microphones not uniformly sensitive to sound pressure? ¶
A: Yes, and can accept differing levels without distorting.
Q: Are microphones commonly used on television and film sets? ¶
A: Yes, and in stadiums, and for field recording of wildlife.
Q: Are microphones used in very specific application areas such as for infrasound monitoring and noise-canceling? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Are microphones categorized by their transducer principle? ¶
A: Yes, such as condenser, dynamic, etc.
Q: Are microphones in short supply? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Are microphones throat microphones? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Are microphones Wolfson Microelectronics now Cirrus Logic? ¶
A: Yes, and InvenSense , Akustica , Infineon , Knowles Electronics, Memstech , NXP Semiconductors , Sonion MEMS, Vesper, AAC Acoustic Technologies, and Omron.
Q: Is a microphone the round black eight ball? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Was a microphone employed at the first ever radio broadcast? ¶
A: Yes, and a performance at the New York Metropolitan Opera House in 1910.
Q: Are microphones ineffective or dangerous? ¶
A: Yes, such as inside industrial turbines or in magnetic resonance imaging equipment environments.
Q: Is a microphone a variant of the contact microphone that picks up speech directly from a person's throat? ¶
A: Yes, and which it is strapped to.
Q: Is a microphone in use? ¶
A: Yes, and which employ different methods to convert the air pressure variations of a sound wave to an electrical signal.
Q: Is a microphone also called a microphone chip or silicon microphone? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Was a microphone initially implemented using an omnidirectional element? ¶
A: Yes, and it is also possible to mount a directional microphone close enough to the surface to gain some of the benefits of this technique while retaining the directional properties of the element.
Q: Were microphones once commonly used in telephones? ¶
A: Yes, they have extremely low-quality sound reproduction and a very limited frequency response range, but are very robust devices.
Q: Is a microphone the direct prototype of today's microphones and was critical in the development of telephony? ¶
A: Yes, and broadcasting and the recording industries.
Q: Is a microphone ideal for that application? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Are microphones similar to moving coil microphones in the sense that both produce sound by means of magnetic induction? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Is a microphone different from magnetic coil pickups commonly visible on typical electric guitars? ¶
A: Yes, and which use magnetic induction, rather than mechanical coupling, to pick up vibration.
Q: Are microphones worn on the body? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Is a microphone a condenser microphone that uses a vacuum tube amplifier? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Is a microphone like a figure-8? ¶
A: Yes, Other polar patterns are derived by creating a capsule that combines these two effects in different ways.
Q: Is a microphone a highly directional design intended for noisy environments? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Is a microphone a cardioid microphone, so named because the sensitivity pattern is "heart-shaped", i.e? ¶
A: Yes, a cardioid.
Q: Is a microphone placed in? ¶
A: Yes, or very close to, one of these boundaries, the reflections from that surface have the same timing as the direct sound, thus giving the microphone a hemispherical polar pattern and improved intelligibility.
Q: Is a microphone primarily sensitive to sounds from only one direction? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Are microphones made to higher quality? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Are microphones often used at the same time to get the best results? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Is a microphone used to describe the microphone? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Are microphones the most highly directional of simple first-order unidirectional types? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Is a microphone equally sensitive to sounds arriving from front or back? ¶
A: Yes, but insensitive to sounds arriving from the side because sound arriving at the front and back at the same time creates no gradient between the two.