Q+A: What Do Microphone Specs Mean?

There are a lot of microphones out in the marketplace and all the spec sheets are not identical in the information they provide or how they provide it. Firstly we need to understand what it all means and what you should look out for in a really good quality microphone that will last you till the end of your career!
IMPEDANCE
This isn't how good your microphone is at reproducing with other microphones but effectively how good the microphone signal is at travelling down long cables. Obviously using low-impedance microphones means less hum picked up along the way (300 Ohms or less is good) you can always help this statistic by using as shorter cable as needed. Alternatively get a digital microphone, which is the same as a condenser microphone but with an analog/digital (A/D) converter built into the microphone and so the signal in the cable is digital and picks up no hum.
MAXIMUM SPL
This refers to the maximum level of sound your microphone can pick up without distortion. 120db being good and above 140db being excellent. 120db the threshold of pain for human ears to give you a reference
SELF NOISE
This refers to how noisy the microphone is. A <25dba is good, <20dba very good and less than 15dba is excellent. The lower the better, especially for quieter scenes or applications. For louder applications like super cars or loud music 30dba is usually fine due to the signal being so much louder then the microphone its self.
[The "a" in dba stands for a scale of frequency response that resembles how the ear picks up sound]
SIGNAL TO NOISE RATIO
This is another measurement for how noisy a microphone is but more relevant to the strength of the signal to the inherent noise. 69dba is good, 74dba is very good and 79dba+ being excellent. Again, this is important of quieter applications as louder sounds already produce louder signals.
SENSITIVITY
This is basically telling you how powerful a signal is being generated by the sound hitting the microphone. Condenser mics have the highest sensitivity. Generally above 6mv/pa is very sensitive and (sensing a pattern yet? ) the higher the sensitivity the stronger the signal and the lower the pick up of hum and other noise.
Hope that clears up any issues, otherwise just comment, like, tweet or +1 below
Thanks

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz - 155th Birthday

Well would be but sadly died at the age of 36! But didn't take him long to see what everyone else couldn't.

Im sure you have guess the young German electronic engineer and physicist who clarified and expanded the electromagnetic theory of light introduced by James Maxwell publishing his theory in 1865. Maxwell was also phenomenal is creating a theory from seemingly unrelated experiments and studies of electricity, magnetism and optics and combined them. He was also known for the first durable colour photograph earlier in 1861 and even did foundation work on rigidity for bridges, and is considered one of the greatest physicists of all time.

Back to our friend Heinrich Rudolf Hertz. He was the first to prove with immense certainty the presents of electromagnetic waves by designing and engineering instruments to transmit and receive radio pulses using procedures to discredit other sources of wireless phenomenon. As such his name was given to the unit of frequency known as, you guessed it Hertz (Hz)

Just So I Don't Breech Copyright :)

See a better image of him from Wikipedia

Sound like a bass smurf on Venus...

View Full Article and Video Here

Above are some recordings that scientists from Southampton University created to replicate how different environments and objects sound on other worlds and moons.

Prof Leighton, who has been working on the sounds of space for the last ten years and commented ''When we hear a voice from Venus, we think the speaker is small, but with a deep bass voice. On Venus, humans sound like bass Smurfs.'

Despite many years of space exploration, scientists have no evidence of the sound of other planets. While most planetary probes have focused on imaging with cameras and radar and a couple have carried microphones, none of them successfully listened to the sound of another world.

Interesting non the less

Thanks for reading