Connecting 2 or more Beyer M55 microphones

At your own risk.


2 equal resistors in series make a resultant resistor of double resistance.


2 equal resistors in parallel make a resultant resistor of half resistance.


The same applies to loads like loudspeakers and to generators like microphones!!!


A Beyer M55 (500Ω) was connected by accident in series with an AKG M 201 -100 (800Ω unbalanced). The sound of both mics was superb. Many microphones can be used for just one voice making effectively a mic of very large diaphragm with the transient responce of a small diaphragm. Same idea as on Pleiades speakers. This may be called the Pleiades microphone. Of coerce many instruments can be recorded, one with its mic, mics, without the need of an adding (mixing) console. No power consumption, economy, and possibly the simplest signal path.


Setup:


M55 in series with M201 - Canford stepup input transformer - Pleiades V4, Vb=3.4V - Realistic disco mixer mono mic input - Sennheiser HD580


Then 2 Beyer M55 were connected in series one of them was unbalanced.


The sound was superb and of course one can sing in front of both mics for double voltage output. Does this mean 4x power?, as the input impedance of a preamplifier is usually high. This means the voltage will be doubled with no voltage drop. And from basic physics P=V*V/R where P is power, V is voltage and R can be considered further to be the load at the output of the preamplifier. Double voltage at same feeding preamp load impedance is 4x of power.


2 microphones can be connected as follows. They do not nessasarily need to be balanced but on the following balanced microphones are assumed.


Each mic has its XLR out. Pin 2 of course is live and pin 3 is return.


On the above example alligator short cables were connected from pin 2 of one mic to pin 3 of the other mic. The pins 2 and 3 left out is the new resultant output.


4 Beyer M55 or other microphones can be connected in series parallel combination to get back to, an impedance that is same as of a single mic. But this mic has now 4 feeds.


Assuming each mic is 500Ω. Two mics make a 1KΩ combination. The other 2 a 1ΚΩ combination. And the 2 combinations connected in parallel takes us back to 500Ω.


Same reasoning applies to 200Ω microphones or microphones of any impedance.


Any combination is possible.


If one needs less sensitive and at the same time some more sensitive mics... Then one can find that the 200Ω mics would sound less than if they were 600 Ω. So any impedance combinations desired can be connected together.


Many microphones can be connected in series to give a very large voltage output that can then feed if needed the grid of an electron tube or gate of a JFET just as is done inside a Neumann U47, preamplifier using a VF14 underheated tube.


How would a full orchestra sound recorded this way?


Is this the simplest possible signal path to record many instruments with each mic close to the instrument?


Each musician would not need to play loud so the sound should be superb.


Each mic can be hang from ceiling or from trees if outdoor acoustics with full absorption is needed.