The technology of laser is quite interesting and a popular one. Laser microphones basically use the same technology while experimenting with the sound. They first of all detect the vibrations in a reflected laser beam and then convert them into audio signal. To say more, with the help of laser light, the laser microphones converts the acoustical sound waves to electrical signal, so that it can be processed and amplified for sound reproduction.

The laser beam that it has must be reflected off a glass window or any rigid surface, which will vibrate corresponding to the nearby sound. This microphone has the ability to turn any vibrating surface into a microphone just by measuring the space between itself and the surface. This is because, while doing so, the little fluctuations in the space become the electrical signal of the sound.

However, these types of microphones are designed in a typical way. The outer housing, which is cylindrical in shape, has spaced opening so that the sound waves can enter. There is also an inner housing, which too is cylindrical in shape and is positioned centrally inside the outer one. Then, to project the laser light into the space between the outer and the inner housing and a detector to receive the laser light that modulates the sound and produce electrical signals out of the waves entering the outer housing.

The laser in the laser microphones is capable of measuring the accurate distance between itself and the surface where it is bouncing off, so in this way it can measure the fluctuation of that surface with the vibration of the sound waves. However, these kinds of microphones are used in movies as spy equipments.

Besides this, there are other types of microphones too. Like, there are lavaliere microphones, contact microphones, parabolic microphones, which are generally used for musical purpose and are in demand. Among all these, the laser microphones are the latest ones but quite expensive and point to be noted is that it is not very portable.

The best feature of the laser microphones is that it provides realistic and distortion free sound that usually was a problem with the older form of mics. In fact, the use of laser beams for sound reproduction has solved many technical problems. In the earlier forms there was only one sound channel that usually received sound from one direction. But the newest forms of microphones like the laser ones have multiple sound channels, which produce sound that are much more realistic and amazing. These types of microphones are even used in movies to give special sound effect.

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How microphones work – in a nut shell.

A microphone captures sound waves with a thin and flexible piece of metal known as a diaphragm. Sound waves are introduced into the microphone, vibrating the diaphragm. The vibrations are then converted by various methods into an electrical signal that is an analog of the original sound.

There are various types of microphones, today we’ll be discussing laser, lavalier, contact, and parabolic microphones.

1. Laser Microphones

A laser microphone utilizes, well, laser technology to capture vibration and convert it into sound. The laser will be reflected off of glass or another flat and rigid surface that vibrates with the sound nearby. The laser measures the distance (very accurately) between itself and the surface it is reflecting off of, and measures the fluctuations of that surface when the sound waves from nearby vibrate said surface. This form of mic is portrayed in movies as spy equipment. But contrary to it’s portrayal, the device is very new, expensive, and not very portable.

2. Lavalier Microphones

This type of microphone is commonly used for hands-free operation, usually clipped to a person’s lapel. They usually have their own power source and can run directly into the mixer, or may be wireless, making it ideal for television.

3. Contact Microphones

In the world of microphones, contact mics are a little different than the rest. They are designed to pick up sound vibrations from solid objects, instead of vibrations carried through the air. This is mainly used to record low level sounds that you would not be able to pick up with a regular mic. These mics consist of a moving coil transducer, a contact plate and pin. The contact plate is placed on the object which you would like to record, the vibration is passed through the plate to the pin which passes it to the transducer. The experimental electronic music group Matmos used this on their album “A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure”, to record the neural activity of a crayfish.

4. Parabolic Microphones

Parabolic microphones use a parabolic reflector to pick up and focus sound waves for a microphone receiver. It is similar in function to a satellite dish in the way that it pick up radio waves. These mics are commonly used for law enforcement surveillance. But they are not very well suited for regular recording, as their low frequency response is very poor.

So this wraps up our Microphones 101 series of articles. I hope you all learned as much from these articles as I have from researching and writing them!

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