contact microphone
A contact microphone is a form of microphone that senses audio vibrations through contact with solid objects. Unlike normal air microphones, contact microphones are almost completely insensitive to air vibrations but transduce only structure-borne sound. Often used as acoustic leakage probes, they also enjoy wide usage by electroacoustic music artists experimenting with sound.
contact microphone
me · Photograph · CC BY-SA 3.0
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Piezoelectric contact microphones
Piezoelectric contact microphones
Contact microphones can be used to amplify sound from acoustic musical instruments, to sense drum hits, for triggering electronic samples, and to record sound in challenging environments, such as underwater under high pressure.
• Illustration — Piezo ceramic on metal disc A piezoelectric sensor is the most commonly available contact microphone. It is made of a thin piezoelectric ceramic disc glued to a thin brass or alloy metal disc (see image). The voltage produced from the sound vibrations can be measured across them. Contact microphones based on piezoelectric materials are passive and high-impedance, and they sound tinny without a matching preamp. Instead of being used as a microphone, they alternatively may be used to produce sound (typically used as the buzzer in computer motherboards) by sending voltages to them.
Coil-based contact microphones
Coil-based contact microphones
Moving coil microphone contact microphones operate by suspending a coil of wire within a magnetic field or alternatively by suspending a magnet above a fixed coil, to induce a signal directly from the object's vibrations.
Thomas Dutronc live at Aux Zarbs festival 2008 (Auxerre, France).
Benoît Derrier · originally posted to Flickr as Thomas Dutronc @ Aux Zarbs (Auxerre) 2008
The contact mic balloonophone #nyuimpact
Ethan Hein from Brooklyn, United States · The contact mic balloonophone #nyuimpact
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The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Contact microphone, revision 1299302131 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
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