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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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.
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.
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):
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