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Mixing and matching microphones: hacking them to work together

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    Mixing and matching microphones: hacking them to work together

    I've had the crappiest of luck with any microphone matching.

    Well, meaning if I am missing a microphone and I hook up any other microphone to the input, it invariably the sound comes out really weak.

    Of course microphone output impedance needs to be matched but what about signal levels. That needs to be matched too but they aren't necessarily indicated.

    The other thing is that I would have expected that half of the time the sound should come out weak and the other half of the time when it doesn't quite work, distorted and overmodulated. Am I just that unlucky to always come out too weak?

    Or is it simply always bad idea to get a brand X microphone to work with device brand Y?

    #2
    Re: Mixing and matching microphones: hacking them to work together

    What exactly are you having difficulties with?

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      #3
      Re: Mixing and matching microphones: hacking them to work together

      Tried to use an old Turner dynamic microphone with a Kenwood TK810 LMRS 2-way... I had to solder a 6P4C connector to the microphone so that I could plug it into the Kenwood.

      I also had this electret microphone from a (I dunno where I ripped it from, somethingrather) and tried to duplicate the Kenwood circuitry. As I deadbugged it, I made some unfortunate substitutions and omissions to make it easier to build. Changing the substitutions a bit, I think I got much better results now (higher voltage regulator, sacrificed some output impedance for higher gain...)

      Incidentally speaking, my Icom microphone I think I need to block off one of the noise cancellation "ports" for it to work better. It appears to be missing a baffle on the noise cancellation port, perhaps causing the sound pickup to be very weak. This microphone actually is the OEM that goes with that Icom U400 radio, however.

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        #4
        Re: Mixing and matching microphones: hacking them to work together

        I think I figured it out, it's completely an impedance matching problem...
        At least if the microphones were all designed with the same voice to electrical energy output...
        This I haven't confirmed yet however.

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