Good morning Rich, I hope I don't get too technical. Low-cost computer
microphones are an economical breed of condenser microphone. As opposed to
the dynamic microphone, which works on moving a coil in a magnetic field,
the condenser microphone requires some voltage between vibrating elements so
it can send a signal to the amplifier. In the low cost microphone, generally
used for the computer, 1.5 V is sent out of the socket on the soundcard
which provides the current for the condenser microphone. If you look at the
plug carefully, you will see that there is a shaft with the traditional
"ball" at the end, but additionally, there is a ring at the bottom of the
shaft before you reach the ball. The shaft is ground, the ball is the
current, and the ring is the audio signal. This whole genre of microphone
was developed to give reasonable audio quality with the least complication.
Your mixer can provide Phantom voltage for a quality condenser microphone at
approximately 48 V DC. Your XLR connectors have three pins: the centre being
ground, with the left and right providing full balanced to the mixer.
Inexpensive microphones use one ground and one hot side, a so-called
unbalanced connection. This kind of connection is vulnerable to signal loss
and interference. Balanced wiring is many times more efficient, especially
when sending microphone audio over a longer distance.
My Behringer mixer has a switch to turn on the phantom voltage, don't know
whether turning it off or on would make any difference.
The cheap microphones people use to use with tape recorders that were
dynamic, could be used with an adapter to your quarter inch microphone
inputs.
I haven't given much thought as to how to wire up a low cost microphone to a
mixer.
I haven't looked, but I would bet there are lots of low cost condenser
microphones from offshore. Try:
dealextreme.com
there is a bottomless bucket of interesting toys there.
Hope this moves you a little further along.
Jeff
-----Original Message-----
From: Rich De Steno
Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2016 7:19 AM
To: PC Audio Discussion List
Subject: Choosing a Mixer Microphone
I recently purchased a Behringer 1202FX mixer. I plugged several
different computer microphones into the XLR jack on channel one, but
none of them work. I hear nothing, but I do hear the line-in inputs.
What type of microphone do I need for a mixer like this. I am only
interested in using it for speech, not music, and I don't want to spend
more than I need to. I found nothing in the manual that excludes any
particular type of microphone, so I don't understand why these cheap
computer microphones don't work.
--
Rich De Steno
