How many microphones have we had?

tktran

__Since my last poll about
How many drivers do you have

https://diy.midwestaudio.club/discussion/2167/how-many-drivers-do-you-have#latest

I thought it might be fun/interesting to see how that many of us more than 1 measurement device. After all, some people have dozens of shoes- nothing wrong with that!

Feel free to describe why/when you purchased more.

I’ll start- my first measurement device was a hand held SPL meter. And some warble tones that John Krutke emailed me via .mp3, to see if I’d built his All Metal System correctly (~2004)

DanW

I make acoustic and vibration measurements professionally...

I answered 4-6, because there are 5 models of microphones I frequently use. The 'work' mics take more effort to interface with REW so the EMM-6 and UMM-6 are used more frequently for personal projects.

Tom_S

Measurements mics - I have 3...wait, 4. My main one is a Cross-Spectrum Labs EMM-6. One is an early EMM-6. I wasn't sure if I trusted it, so I bought the CSL mic. I bought one of those little Dayton IMM6 mics, but never really used it. I have a Behringer version from the mid 90s floating around somewhere.

4thtry

1) ~1980-1990: Original Radio Shack SPL meter - I used this in combo with a Stereo Review warble tone test record to measure speakers.

2) Then I built Joe D'Appolito's "Mitey Mic" from an old Audio Amateur article. It uses a Panasonic WM-60AY 6x5mm microphone cartridge that was fitted onto the end of a long brass tube. I used this mic with a program called Speakerworkship. As I recall, I spent most of my time fighting with the software settings and control panel settings to get it to work properly.

3) OmniMic, original version. Incredibly easy to set up and take measurements.

4) Sonarworks SoundID, Arta jig, Steinberg UR22, two channel system.

tktran

My first real microphone was a Umik-1; around 2013 when I started it playing around with room correction.
After I realised the power of Dirac Live!, I purchased a Dirac powered miniDSP box from eBay, which came with it's own Umik-1. So now I had two! I loaned this second one to a friend for long term use. In the meantime I started getting into measurements of the speakers I had just built- @jholtz and @Curt_C Statements II with Dirac.

Fast forward a few blurry years with the birth of my 2nd child and few house moves came Covid. And so we all stuck at home. I got back into the hobby, but I found it hard to purchase NOS soundcard like the ECHO, M-Audio, Terratec PCI soundcards, since I was using a laptop as my main system by now. I remember reading a tutorial on VituixCAD2 which mentioned Sonarworks Xref20 microphone and Focusrite audio interface. These devices were readily available in Australia by now- so I took the plunge.

Everything was going fine until I saw some measurements by @dcibel that I couldn't seem to reconcile. He had measured a 5" driver that had lower apparent harmonic distortion than a 6" version of the same model/variety that @Steve_Lee had kindly sent me. That didn't make sense! "Don't larger drivers generally have lower non-linear distortion than smaller drivers?"

Then out of the blue my friend returned the Umik-1. And the two Umik-1's didn't measure the same.
What is going on?

I wanted to get down to the bottom of it.

So it was time to beg, borrow or steal microphones and measure just one driver, to see what one earth was going on in my setup. Before I knew it, I was going on a deep dive with microphones, from the past (Bruel & Kjaer, General Radio) to the present (G.R.A.S), to the future (eg. MEMS). I didn’t mean to collect all these microphones… it just kind of happened!

@4thtry

Was fighting with Speakerworkshop related to the software, microphone, or both?

The reason I ask is two reasons- I have a couple of Panasonic WM61A capsules from that era, but never got around to building the MightyMike/2. I wonder if it’s a nice little project I could do with my 12 yo kid for basic electronics.
It’s nice for kids to build something and see it working/how it works. There seem to be fewer and fewer of these, after the demise of Radio Shack type of stores…

The second reason is kind of selfish- it would be nice to see how well it performs against even the cheap electret mics without compensation that have come out of China in the last decade or so. The retail products are sold under a variety of labels with variable levels of QC eg. new Behringer ECM800, Dayton EMM-6, Superlux ECM999, T-Bone MM1.
After all, there still modern day articles about DIY microphones, presented in Australia (Silicon Chip magazine- August 20230 ECM, April 20240- MEMS).

PS. One of the Umik-1 was damaged. And it wasn't the one that was loaned to a friend! I must have dropped a microphone. There's a reason why they come in those foamy cases people!!!

4thtry

@tktran , I was fighting with the software, not the microphone. Speakerworkshop settings and the Windows XP Control Panel gave me fits. I had to get the volume control settings in Control Panel and Speakerworkshop "just right" to get a usable measurement. I got garbage type FR screens most of the time. But the mic always worked perfectly. It ran on a small 9volt battery. I still have it. I stole the 9 volt battery holder out of it a few years ago but am thinking about fixing it and using it once again. I can calibrate the capsule using my other calibrated mics.

This would make a great training project. I posted a few pictures of it in the "Test Instruments & rigs - share them here" thread. Scroll down to about the middle of the attached link:
https://diy.midwestaudio.club/discussion/comment/27877#Comment_27877