Sunday, September 4, 2016

Dynamic headphones ready as great 3D microphones?

(At your own risk) The microphones of the future or present? will be the headphones themselves?


Will they be ribbon (both sides open so you hear with one side and record with the other) or dynamic or condenser?


A dynamic (as ribbons too) driver unit is already a microphone. A microphone and a speaker have in common coil and magnet. When you apply a voltage to the coil it becomes and electromagnet. It therefore interacts with the permanent magnet and there is force that moves the membrane therefore movemeant of air therefore sound.


When we speak to a speaker or a mic vibrating air molecules hit the membrane it moves, the coil attached to it moves too and there's EMF ie voltage induced on the wire coil because it is surrounded by the magnetic field of the stationary percent magnet.


This is the reciprocity principle. You connect voltage to something and it moves. Then you move it, it generates voltage. This is exactly the same as the motor which can become a generator and vice versa. Like listening through a dynamic microphone by connecting it to the headphones output.


So can we use our headphones as 3D microphones?


An advantage is that the same transducer is the reproducing and recording one, earphone microphone.


This means the sound field reproduced could be as close as possible to the original? The membrane is in the same position next to our ears as when recording was taking place.


So the open back Seenheiser HD580 are ready to record?


They are 300ohms which is very convenient as most mics are 200-300ohms so with the right adapter they can be connected to 2 mini microphone preamplifiers or a stereo one.


Omni transducers can be tried too.

No comments:

Post a Comment