The Ribbon Microphone | Hacker News Reader

The Ribbon Microphone

khz.ac

207 pointsglittershark65 comments

For anyone interested in how mucrophones can sound different, check out Jim Lill's video [1] where he A/B tests a bunch of mics against one another and industry standards.

He has a whole series of videos where he explores what contributes the most to "guitar tone", all the way from the strings to your ears and in between. It's a bit of an eye opener to say the least. Highly, highly recommended.

1: https://youtu.be/4Bma2TE-x6M

That is a ridiculously well made video, thanks for sharing!

Love his series, but you really have to keep in mind that his testing methodology is "reductionist": a microphone's quality can't just be distilled to its EQ response. Phase, transient response, clipping, etc. are also part of the equation.

edit: My "case in point" moment is Jim's (excellent!) DIY amp section in this video: https://youtu.be/wcBEOcPtlYk?si=jkehIfyo6AgeTLUo&t=918. Its EQ indeed sounds like the big names, but I'm sure you'll also notice how its dynamics also sound so thin. That's likely because solid state clipping != (saggy) tube overdrive.

>> solid state clipping != (saggy) tube overdrive.

Clipping tends to produce odd harmonics, and blocks highs entirely in the flat parts.

Nonlinearity across the signal range can produce even harmonics and doesn't delete portions of small signals.

The takeaway for me on all his videos is that yes, these things are different, and they make a difference. But the difference is so subtle and nuanced that its nigh on impossible hear it, especially in the mix, played on a CD, over a stereo in a less-than-ideal treated room.

In one of his amp cab videos he has the appiphany that all his tone chasing was for naught, because he failed to consider that each and every sound he hears has been recorded. He cannot replicate the tone of how an amp or cab or speaker or guitar sounded, because that sound was recorded, where the mic, preamp, console and recording medium all added their own influence, and him listening to an amp in the room is not how that amp actually sounded. And live sound is a completely different animal all together!

That's an amazing video, the first 30min Youtube I've seen that is densely packed with usefulness and without any fluff (in pace, audio and visuals).

I wish he had vocals in his comparison set.

I did love to see five different U87s tested. They have such a great reputation, and we used them so much when I was producing but it's amazing to me how variable they were from mic to mic. Knowing that I would avoid moving forward unless it's my own, that I know.

I think people get too hung up on the natural frequency response of mics. A ribbon mic can achieve such a low noise floor with high sensitivity that high gain EQ stays clean.

An interesting feature of ribbon mics - because the ribbon is open at the front and the back, they reject sound from the side (and top/bottom) almost perfectly. You can arrange these cleverly in live or studio settings to amplify one thing while rejecting another completely.

A typical usecase for this is a singer with an acoustic guitar - one mic can pick up the guitar and almost fully reject the vocals, and vice-versa. Pretty cool.

Relevant Wired articles from 2011:

* "Relics Reborn: Ribbon Microphones Rally for Vintage-Audio Geeks" https://www.wired.com/2011/01/gallery-ribbon-mics-part-1/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240118172709/https://www.wired...

* "Ribbon Microphones: Audio Icon You Can Build in Your Garage" https://www.wired.com/2011/01/ribbon-mics-part-2/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160326035336/https://www.wired... (the internal link from part 1 to part 2 in the Wired story is currently broken!)

(These were posted in 2011 by user mainland but didn't get any comments.)

It also led to the ability to sing in a quieter, more natural way, and gave birth to the "crooner" style. The earlier popularized carbon button microphone (invented in 1878) didn’t enable this personal singing style. If you look at one you might mistake it for the receiver of an old telephone handset (which in essence it was).

It's a fascinating topic, how technology forms new genres of music. The microphone is often overlooked for its importance in 20th century music evolution.

Music changed so much from tech like better mics, recording, and inventions from Les Paul (reverb, echo, delay, and more). It took a while for the musicians to catch up with it, but when they did, that new tech led to decades of new genres.

Seems like you could get many of the benefits of a ribbon by using a laser to measure the vibration of the ribbon vs measuring the voltage. Of course the ribbon won't vibrate the same without a magnetic field applied so you could still supply that. You'll also just be picking up the vibrations at one point of the ribbon instead of the summation(?) of it's movement. But you won't have to worry so much about noise and shielding, while still retaining a low resonant frequency.

You might be able to use a laser, with a video camera as the sensor. Even though the frame rate of the camera is much less than the sampling rate required for audio, it potentially has a high enough spatial resolution that there are multiple pixels per audio wavelength, giving enough bits of information per unit time. Some smart maths, effectively modelling the ribbon and matching its response to the observation, would be required. In this way, the vibration of the whole ribbon might be measured.

You don't need a video camera, you just need a photodiode which can be made much faster than a full video sensor.

You could probably do so with something like this right now, pointing it at the ribbon: https://pki-electronic.com/products/audio-surveillance-equip...

Or just a sheet of glass in front of the singer.

If the author's reading this, the site renders like this in a recent Firefox - https://i.imgur.com/lazMsqx.png

Not the case on v134.0.1 on Linux Mint.

https://i.imgur.com/vmUFR9K.png

In Safari it looks like there has been a “text-transform: lowercase” in the CSS.

I don't have this particular issue, but instead the text size is hilariously huge. The CSS contains this fragment:

  @media (min-resolution: 1.5dppx) {
   :root {
    font-size: 2.4rem;
   }
  }

My 27 inch 4k monitor comes in at a device pixel ratio of ~1.58, triggering this (presumably) phone-targeted style.

This is a common problem with stylesheets based on tufte-css (an excellent project) which attempts to make things nice for mobile users but often makes the wrong assumption about screen geometry.

My blog had the same problem until I removed the css styles that triggered the font size.

the author is in fact reading this and will make some changes

edit: haven't managed to replicate the absurdly huge image; what version # & os are you on?

I'm seeing this effect with Firefox 115.9.1esr (64-bit), running under Debian 12.

Adding this solves the problem:

    figure img { width: 100%; }

And like this in Windows/Chrome latest:

https://imgur.com/a/QnNbLEG

on a non-maximized window.

Is there a recording somewhere to hear what this sounds like?

It sounds just like any other mic, with subtle differences audible only to the most trained ear.

Their frequency response is probably well characterised and documented, so you can simulate one by putting an appropriate EQ over a "normal" mic and the outcome will be indistinguishable from the real thing.

Disagree. Ribbon mics have a very distinct sound. The top end in particular. They also distort when pushed.

Trained ear means one where you have good speakers (headphones may be better) and listen to the same thing on several different microphones. It isn't hard to train your ears if you want to spend the time.

Do you listen to the music, or do you listen to the mic that it was recorded with?

When I'm making the music it is important to get the details right. When I'm listening to what someone else made it doesn't matter.

Amy Winehouse “Back to Black”. They tracked her vocals with an RCA ribbon mic.

Edit: fixed a typo

Any Winehouse is such an unfortunate typo

Fixed! Thanks for catching.

They have a bit different characteristics to dynamic/condenser mics - usually less high frequency content, and pronounced proximity effect.

Often used for horns, violin, guitar cabs - sources where you want to reduce "shrillness" but you can use them anywhere.

it looks like there's a recording linked at the end of the post

Ribbon mics: Expensive, and notoriously fragile (to high SPL).

Some are so sensitive that you can actually destroy the ribbon by shutting the (mic) case lid too fast.

As you’ve pointed out High SPL isn’t what breaks ribbons, it’s high SPL at low frequencies (ie wind/air moving frequencies, like those produced from a slamming wooden case lid.

Kick drums and bass guitar amps might not be a good match for a ribbon, but speech (with a pop filter) is fine.

Modern mics like those from Royer Labs can handle high SPL (cranked 100w guitar amp).

There are a few reasons why professionals still like ribbons for certain tasks: unlike condensers and dynamics, the resonant frequency of the ribbon is typically very low (20Hz), so you don’t get any peaks or artifacts when the source audio vibrates at the resonant frequency of the mic. Also, if you like the sound of your expensive mic preamplifier, the low output ribbon mics let you add gain/dirt/harmonic distortion which to some is pleasing to the ear.

Love that the op built his own, that’s really awesome.

Yeah, I have a Royer R-121 which I use in combination a SM57 on guitar cabs/amps - classic combo as you get the fullness and low-end of the Royer, and attack and top-end of the dynamic. But eyewatering price when considering it's only one microphone (though it has more use cases, like overhead).

With that said, every ribbon mic I've owned, I've felt like I've had to handle with kid gloves, just in case.

Is the frequency response purely a function of the physical shape? I wonder why you can't use a similar diaphragm shape but as a condenser?

No, it's a function of the acoustic, mechanical, and electrical properties of the entire system.

An easy way to understand this with dynamic mics is that the coil itself has some resistance, inductance, and capacitance that impedes the flow of the induced current through the coil. That impedance is frequency dependent, so the properties of the coil affect the frequency response.

Same principle applies to all transducers. The acoustic energy is converted into mechanical/kinetic energy and then into electrical energy. So to understand the frequency response you need to understand the acoustic, mechanical, and electrical impedances.

That’s great, but would love to hear samples to see if it’s any good!

Apparently aluminum ribbons can be used the other way too with some success. I recently came across a ribbon speaker: https://www.instructables.com/DIY-Tinfoil-Ribbon-Speaker/

Is this basically just the inverse of an electrostatic speaker? I've seen DIY builds of those using very thin films coated with some electrosensitive solution - would that work as an alternative for the foil/leaf used here?

No, a ribbon microphone is sort-of a dual of a dynamic microphone if you squint hard enough. An electrostatic speaker is closer to the inverse of a condenser (capacitor) microphone

Just to add: inverse of ribbon microphone is ribbon speaker [1].

[1] https://www.psaudio.com/blogs/pauls-posts/how-a-ribbon-speak...

Thank you. I've dabbled in audio for 25 years and had no idea these existed.

This was an excellent read! I dabbled in DIY audio gear as a teenager, mostly building headphone amps. Never dreamed of trying something as complex as this.

I built a ribbon mic from a kit a while ago, and only broke the ribbon once putting it together! https://www.bumblebeepro.com/

Of course, as soon as i tried to record my guitarist with it, he cranked his amp and broke it again. Guitarists, man...

Recording drum kits with them must be a delicate business…

They don’t have any EMI shielding? I use an aluminum pedal box, cut holes, and screen them with fine steel mesh. The XLR terminal grounds the mic, cable, and transformer together. These should have such a low noise floor they can pick up LF signals like train tracks and subwoofers rumbling off in the distance.

I bought my father a RM-BIV3 ribbon microphone [0] to record violin. It's a beautiful piece.

[0] https://micpedia.com/microphone/bashaudio-rm-biv3/

Is there a sample sound? Cool design

there is (now) a sample recording, for anyone interested.

One of my favorite winter fireside poems as a child.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45081/the-cremation-o...

All lowercase text is so hard to read.

I also fell for the purple text that didn't turn out to be a link

This is quite the style

i didn't find it hard to read, personally

perhaps the author is anti-capital-ist?

having an entire separate alphabet just to mark the start of sentences, and proper names, does seem extremely wasteful

on the microphone, it looks like quite a delicate process

i've modded some cheap aliexpress microphones (eg following https://audioimprov.com/AudioImprov/Mics/Entries/2015/12/20_...) but i'd want to see some measurements or reviews before embarking on something like this one

capitals could damage the ribbon

on my machine, the text is also gigantic, and some of it is outside the screen :')

ifyouthinkthatsbadbearinmindthatbothcapitallettersinlowercasetextandspacesbetweenwordsarefairlyrecentinventions

nd y dnt rly nd bth vwls nd spcs s sm lngg grps ntlly drppd vwls whn thy gt spcs

𓁑 𓁒 𓁓 𓁔 𓁕 𓁖 𓁗

𓄒 𓄓 𓄔 𓄕 𓄖 𓄗 𓄘

𓀊 𓀋 𓀌 𓀍 𓀎 𓀏 𓀌

𓋥 𓋦 𓋧 𓋨 𓋩 𓋪 𓋫

𓉢 𓉣 𓉤 𓉥 𓉦 𓉧 𓉨

And what about changing direction on each line ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon

In the good old mandatory "headphones are speakers" spirit (which us kids at 12 years old had fun with by plugging our headphones in the mic input to act as a mic) I'll mention that ribbon tweeters in speakers are a thing too. My floor-standing loudspeakers have two tweeters, one of which is a ribbon tweeter.

The vertical tweeters in the vid here are ribbon tweeters (same speakers but not my vid):

https://youtu.be/Tgk_ke1BRiM

Reply on news.ycombinator.com