120th AES Convention - Paris, France - Dates: Saturday May 20 - Tuesday May 23, 2006 - Porte de Versailles

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AES Paris 2006


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Last Updated: 20060331, mei

P1 - Microphones

Saturday, May 20, 09:00 — 11:40

Chair: Helmut Wittek, SCHOEPS Mikrofone GmbH - Karlsruhe, Germany

P1-1 The Effect of the Singer’s Head on Vocalist MicrophonesMartin Schneider, Georg Neumann GmbH - Berlin, Germany
Vocalist microphones are often optimized for theoretically perfect polar patterns, e.g., cardioid, supercardioid or hypercardioid. The polar pattern can be maintained very well if the microphone is placed in the free-field, with no obstacle around it. When the singer approaches the microphone, the head serves as a reflective and diffractive obstacle. Consequently the far-field polar patterns and frequency responses are distorted, making the microphones more prone to feedback in live amplification situations, and altering the sound of the “spill” in pure recording situations.

Presentation is scheduled to begin at 09:00
Convention Paper 6634 (Purchase now)

P1-2 Wind Generated Noise in Microphones—An Overview: Part 1Eddy B. Brixen, DPA Microphones A/S - Allerød, Denmark, EBB-consult, Smorum, Denmark; Ruben Hensen, DPA Microphones - Allerød, Denmark
When microphones are exposed to wind, noise is generated. The amount of noise generated depends on many factors: the speed and the direction of the wind being, of course, two of the important factors. However, the size, shape, and design principles of the microphones are also very important factors. At higher wind speeds, not only is noise generated but also distortion is introduced, normally as a result of clipping. This paper presents comparative measurements that provide an overview of the parameters influencing wind-noise generated in pressure and pressure-gradient condenser microphones.

Presentation is scheduled to begin at 09:20
Convention Paper 6635 (Purchase now)

P1-3 P-MOS FET Application for Silicon Condenser MicrophonesNorihiro Arimura, Juro Ohga, Shibaura Institute of Technology - Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan; Norio Kimura, Yoshinobu Yasuno, Panasonic Semiconductor Device Solutions Co., Ltd. - Tsuzuki-ku, Yokohama, Japan
Electret Condenser Microphones (ECM) are widely used as general microphone devices. Each year the miniaturization and voltage lowering for the cellular phone’s power consumption is improved. Although the current ECM has progressed to be small and thin, the FET has not been designed as low-voltage operation in spite of small packaging. This paper pays attention to the P-MOS FET of the low current consumption for miniaturization and the improvement in performance by using CMOS process. The authors designed and tested prototype microphone units and performed comparisons on a basic performance with the conventional ECM.

[Associated Poster Presentation in Session P5, Saturday, May 20, at 14:00]

Presentation is scheduled to begin at 09:40
Convention Paper 6636 (Purchase now)

P1-4 Development of a Super-Wide-Range MicrophoneKazuho Ono, Hayao Tanabe, Masakazu Iwaki, Akio Ando, NHK Science and Technical Research Laboratories - Kinuta Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, Japan; Keishi Imanaga, Sanken Microphone Co. Ltd. - Suginami-ku, Tokyo, Japan
This paper describes the development of a low-noise, high-sensitivity microphone with a wide frequency range. Microphones of this kind are needed to provide high quality sound sources for use in studies on the perceptual discrimination between musical sounds with and without very high frequency components. Conventional electrostatic microphones cannot be used for such recordings because conventional methods for expanding the frequency range use a small diaphragm that degrades the S/N ratio. The proposed microphone has a new design in which the frequency range is expanded in two ways, using both the diffraction and the resonance due to the microphone’s diaphragm. These effects are generally thought to define the upper limit of the frequency range, but the authors have made active use of them to achieve both a wide frequency range and high sensitivity. The body shape was designed with the help of a scale model study. An omnidirectional, electrostatic microphone that picks up sounds of up to 100-kHz with low noise has been developed.

[Associated Poster Presentation in Session P5, Saturday, May 20, at 14:00]

Presentation is scheduled to begin at 10:00
Convention Paper 6637 (Purchase now)

P1-5 Listening Broadband Physical Model for Microphones: A First StepLaurent Millot, Université Paris - Paris, France, ENS Louis-Lumiere, Noisy Le Grand, France; Antoine Valette, Manuel Lopes, ENS Louis-Lumiere - Noisy Le Grand, France; Gérard Pelé, Université Paris - Paris, France, ENS Louis-Lumiere, Noisy Le Grand, France; Mohammed Elliq, ENS Louis-Lumiere - Noisy Le Grand, France; Dominique Lambert, Université Paris - Paris, France, ENS Louis-Lumiere, Noisy Le Grand, France
We will present the first step in the design of a broadband physical model for microphones. Within the proposed model, classical directivity patterns (omnidirectionnal, bidirectional, and cardioids family) are found as limit cases: monochromatic excitation, low frequency, and far-field approximation. Monophonic pieces of music are used as sources for the model so we can listen to the simulation of the associated recorded sound field in real time thanks to a Max/MSP application. Listening and subband analysis show that the directivity is a function of frequent subband and source location. This model also exhibits an interesting proximity effect. Audio demonstrations will be given.

[Associated Poster Presentation in Session P5, Saturday, May 20, at 14:00]

Presentation is scheduled to begin at 10:20
Convention Paper 6638 (Purchase now)

P1-6 Measuring the Perceived Differences between Similar High-Quality MicrophonesDouglas McKinnie, Consultant - Guildford, Surrey, UK
Microphones of similar construction and polar-pattern that can be equalized to have nearly identical on-axis frequency response still are reported to have different sonic character. To help develop a model of how other physical measurements could predict the subjective sonic character, perceptual data was collected from a panel of listeners. The listeners individually made dissimilarity ratings of pair-wise comparisons of nine versions of a single piano performance. Each version was recorded with a different model of small-diaphragm cardioid condenser microphone. The data was collected in order to derive a stimulus space showing the most salient dimensions upon which the perceived timbre of the microphones differed.

[Associated Poster Presentation in Session P5, Saturday, May 20, at 14:00]

Presentation is scheduled to begin at 10:40
Convention Paper 6639 (Purchase now)

P1-7 The Native B-Format Microphone: Part IIEric Benjamin, Dolby Laboratories - San Francisco, CA, USA; Thomas Chen, Studio C - Stockton, CA, USA
Part I of this paper (119th AES Convention Paper 6621) described the objective performance of tetrahedral cardioid arrays versus arrays comprised of discrete pressure and pressure gradient microphone capsules. In the present paper the results of direct listening comparisons between the two types of arrays are given. Simultaneous recordings were made using pairings of the arrays for subsequent comparisons. The sources include both speech and music, and the environments include a range from very dry to very reverberant. The recordings were compared in both horizontal-only and in periphonic reproduction systems.

Presentation is scheduled to begin at 11:00
Convention Paper 6640 (Purchase now)

P1-8 Influence of Components Precision on Characteristics of Dual Microphone ArraysAlexander Valitov, Alango Ltd. - St. Petersburg, Russia; Alexander Goldin, Alango Ltd. - Haifa, Israel
Microphone arrays have great potential in practical applications due to their ability for significant improvement in speech quality and signal-to-noise ratio in noisy environments. Large numbers of scientific papers and patents have been devoted to different algorithmic techniques for producing optimal output of microphone arrays using different optimization criteria. However, in practice performance of microphone arrays to a large extent depend on the quality of their components such as amplitude matching, phase matching, error in distance between microphones, etc. This paper analyses dependence of dual microphone array characteristics on the above factors.

[Associated Poster Presentation in Session P5, Saturday, May 20, at 14:00]

Presentation is scheduled to begin at 11:20
Convention Paper 6641 (Purchase now)


   
  (C) 2006, Audio Engineering Society, Inc.