What do you find mystical about ribbon mics?

The origin of the topic:



Marik kindly decided not to take over a different thread, but we want this discussed. By him and by others.

So chime in.

Bear

yes please

*waves hands in front of face making Wayne's World sound*

I have a question which goes to differences in ribbon mics since we got Marik and fum here.

I have noticed that output impedances in the "good" ribbons appear to be lower than the one which aren't so good. Is there anything to these differing output impedances? Or, am I just noticing specs that got nothing to do with the differences?

I feel that the way the transformer is made( what kind of core, winding structure) will have a larger effect on the overall sound than the output impedence.

Unless you're talking really long cable runs

ju

What kind of effects are we talking about? Frequency response, dynamic response, something else?

Bear

I'm going to hang back and let Marik hop on the soapbox, as he started the mystical ribbon topic. =)

Regards

ju

Yeah... that's kind of friend you are



My feeling is much of the specs are kinda... out of blue, esp. with much of Chinese stuff. For example, it is no secret that many Chinese ribbons are 6 micron thick. In this case, since the foil is so thick and has very low resistance the output impedance with a given transformer will be much lower than say, with 1.5um (specifically, 4 times). With rightly desgned transformer with low copper resistnace, there will be an additional benefit of much lower self noise.
Another question is how damn thick thing sounds, when the material is prone for lotsa resonance modes, low sensitivity, etc...

But here is the main mistery. Just look all over the internet. You will see a lot of discussions about condensers, where pretty much any noob would agree that AKGC1000 or say, MXL2001 suck, and somebody else would make a point that "well, there are some applications those might be usefull", and then flame wars would start.

With ribbons though, all those discussions are much evened out and ANY will sound pretty decent--whatever you do they still sound OK... even those 6um ones with some "crazy" corrugation, which does not make any sense.

Ribbons are so simple, but I feel it is some kind of misterious Zen to make an optimal system. Sure, "toss in whatever works" approach works fine and is still bringing lotsa money to some manufacturers, but to make a highly optimized system is incredibly hard--you improve one thing and two others go.
The irony is that in many cases the final result for somebody might be not even that much different--something what reminds me words of my dear piano teacher who ones told me:

"My dear, the difference between bad and good is the same as between good and great, and is the same as between great and ingenious, which is--VERY LITTLE".

Best, M

but what is the difference between, bad ingenious,

And for those who don't know, Marik and I have talked ribbons back and forth in the past, and he was around back when I first started to diving into this slippery slope.

To me, the mystique around ribbons (and why I spend so much time messing with them) is that it's such a simple electrical device, but there are so many physical aspects that influence the end result that it becomes a mixture of science and art. I'm really into where the two converge. I try not to get bogged down in the science, because at the end of the day, it's an analog world, and how something makes me feel is more important than what it looks like on paper.

So to try and say that the output impedence of the microphone is the determining factor isn't really telling the whole story.


*waves hands in front of face making Wayne's World noises, AGAIN *

Regards

ju