Choosing Your Wired Microphone
One of the most important decisions you will make for your sound is choosing the right microphone. Whether you’re recording in the studio or performing live, we offer the microphone selection you deserve for a high level of performance and reliability with practical design features and great value. With so many different microphones available, we also know this choice can be a chore unless you know what to look for.
Dynamic and Condenser are the two types of microphones available. Dynamic microphones are the most popular and widely used as they are economical, hardwearing, and supply their own power. They are proven all-purpose microphones with exceptional performance. Condenser (or Electret) microphones are well-known for their high sensitivity to sound making them preferable for high quality studio recordings and special applications such as speech, music or overhead choir installations. These microphones also require power from an outside source such as batteries or a mixing console to operate—this power is known as phantom power.
Phantom Power—Method of power for condenser microphone circuitry that adds a phantom voltage generated from mixing consoles, mic preamplifiers, batteries, or in-line phantom power supplies. You may use any one of these depending on which one your condenser microphone requires.
A Microphone Pickup Pattern identifies how your microphone picks up sound for amplification. The figures below illustrate some of the more popularly applied pickup patterns being used.
