Talk:Microphone

Mic Pulsing
Gentleman, how about an article on "Mic Pulsing" - the act/tactic of covertly cutting off/lowering the volume of an opponent's microphone during a public debate/speech?--פרץ הכהן (talk) 22:13, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
 * New articles must meet notability standards. I'm not finding any coverage of this term. ~Kvng (talk) 14:39, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Never heard the term, and Google seems to confirm what Kvng said. BernardoSulzbach (talk) 22:56, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Shotgun is not a Polar Pattern
Can we please change the image in the Polar Pattern section labeled "Shotgun" to Lobar? While some shotgun microphones may have the lobar polar pattern many types of shotgun mics do not. A shotgun microphone is a microphone type and the paragraph explaining it would be better moved down to the "Application-specific" designs section. I have never seen a spec sheet use the term "shotgun" to describe a polar pattern and have never heard an audio professional use the term to describe a polar pattern. MCITW (talk) 06:11, 11 November 2019 (UTC)


 * I have never seen a spec sheet use the term "lobar" to describe a polar pattern and have never heard an audio professional use the term to describe a polar pattern.
 * I just used the search function of a well known professional MIC manufacturer, they sell shotguns but no lobars.
 * --AK45500 (talk) 21:00, 1 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Lobar is not a type of mic, but it is indeed a mic pickup pattern. Most shotgun mics have a lobar pattern. - LuckyLouie (talk) 23:52, 1 April 2020 (UTC)


 * ✅ Changed label ~Kvng (talk) 13:56, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Dead ref link
and (presumably the same editor) wants to change a dead reference link http://www.shure.com/americas/about-shure/history/index.htm to https://www.swanseaairport.com/history-the-evolution-of-an-audio-revolution. This new link is to an article with the same title as the old one but I very much doubt it is the same article. The ref is supporting "The SM58 has been the most commonly used microphone for live vocals for more than 50 years" and there is no mention of the SM58 (or any microphone) at this new link. I've already reverted this twice. Can someone else have a look? ~Kvng (talk) 13:32, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Spammer from Vietnam. The www.swanseaairport.com website appears to be scraping the web to copy various articles and attract eyeballs. Binksternet (talk) 15:10, 1 October 2021 (UTC)

Please add the angle of sensitivity to the shotgun microphone
I'm using angle of sensitivity as the angle of the cone that shotgun microphones are designed to pick up sounds. This would be really useful for users to know so that they know whether a shotgun mic is right for their application. Thanks.FreeFlow99 (talk) 14:54, 19 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I believe this will depend on the microphone. ~Kvng (talk) 14:41, 22 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Yes, it definitely will. "Shotgun" isn't a pattern; it's a method of construction, using an interference tube in front of the capsule. The result depends greatly on the length of the tube. At low and low-mid frequencies, where the length of the tube is a small fraction of a sound wavelength, the tube has little effect and the microphone basically has whatever pattern (often supercardioid) is inherent to its capsule. Above a transition frequency where the length of the tube is about a half-wavelength of the sound, the pattern narrows, but very irregularly; honest polar diagrams of shotgun microphones are quite unruly-looking, and their coloration of off-axis sound pickup is a notorious problem. But that transition frequency, as well as the degree of irregularity in the resulting patterns, depends greatly on the length of the interference tube. So professionals tend to use shorter shotguns when they can, and longer ones only when necessary. DSatz (talk) 22:50, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Sorry to say, the entire section on impedance matching is misconceived
Impedance matching is a technically specific term in electronics: a circuit approach in which the receiving (load) impedance for a signal equals its sending (source) impedance. It's the ideal arrangement when maximum efficiency of power transfer is required. Early telephone systems used it, for example, and since early sound systems grew out of telephone systems, for those first few decades it was usual for sound equipment to have actual 600 Ohm inputs, or in some cases even 200 Ohms. In radio frequency circuits, impedance matching is still a very useful concept. However, modern microphone inputs (including just about everything designed in my 70+-year lifetime) use voltage transfer rather than power transfer. This requires "bridging" rather than "matching"--loads with impedance an order of magnitude greater than the source impedance. Studio microphones made in my lifetime generally have source impedances around 150-200 Ohms; transformerless condenser microphones often have even lower impedances, such as 25 to 35 Ohms--while the input impedance of a microphone input on a preamp, mixer or recorder is normally 1 kOhm, or even as high as 20 kOhm. This approach is thoroughly standardized, helps isolate the microphone from loading effects such as the resistance and capacitance of long microphone cables, and greatly reduces losses (which may be frequency-selective) in the impedance of the preamp, mixer or recorder input that the microphone is connected to. DSatz (talk) 23:14, 5 December 2021 (UTC)