Using a speaker as a microphone is a trick old enough to have become common knowledge, but how often do you see the hack reversed? As part of a larger project to measure the acoustic power of a ...

There are different kinds of microphones, but they all do about the same thing, which is to turn acoustic sounds into electronic signals that can be amplified, modified, or recorded. When you speak ...

Fig. 1: Diagrams from Wente’s 1916 patent application show the condenser microphone in cutaway view. Diaphragm (#6), which is grounded, is stretched only 5/10000th of an inch from the backplate (#7), ...

If you’ve ever used a cellphone, hearing aid, or baby monitor, listened to live or recorded music, or recorded anything yourself, you’re indebted to James West. West is the co-inventor of the electret ...

In the Aug. 10 issue, we wrote about the centennial of condenser microphones. Let’s look more closely at electret condenser microphones. Fig. 1: The few components that make up an electret microphone.