You’ll find plenty of contact mic tutorials floating around the Web, but bassling (Jason Richardson) – working with a learned technique – has what I think is a really nice example, one that sounds really good. It’s easy to do, but unlike a popular tutorial (and one I’ve tried myself), you won’t wind up dis-assembling a Radio Shack piezo speaker. The result is an inexpensive, versatile microphone that will happily go places your conventional mic won’t, giving you new possibilities for sampling and sound design.

bassling credits his source:

This technique was taught to me by Alan Lamb when we worked together as part of the 2006 Unsound Festival. He’d developed this approach for recording ‘the wires,’ a large-scale aeolian harp modeled on telegraph poles he recorded in Western Australia.

Full tutorial:
How to make contact microphones [Bassling / Selectronica blog]

Here’s what it sounds like:
Piezo contact mic demonstration using a biscuit tin as a hand drum by bassling

I’d love to hear from readers: have you built contact mics? Which technique worked best for you?

And, if you try this one, any suggestions on various suppliers for the piezo crystal part itself? (Particularly in the US, Germany and continental Europe, UK, Japan, other places we have lots of readers.)

More:
Creme Dementia’s handmade bottle cap mics, on GetLoFi
Tutorials on the “Radio Shack” approach (though I like the one above better):
furious contact microphone assembly
Make a DIY Contact Microphone

Need a new mic to play with? Maybe you should raid your kitchen pantry.

London-based musician Leafcutter John writes us to share a detailed tutorial on cooking up new mics from common household ingredients:

Real Sound Cookery – Make a contact mic with baking soda and cream of tartar. [leafcutterjohn.com]

That in turn is inspired by a terrific, detailed video by our friend Collin Cunningham for MAKE:Magazine (Collin’s also been a regular at our Handmade Music series in NYC).

The result: you’ve got the material to do some field recording or experimental sound design. Leafcutter John shares a bit of hands-on experience working with the thing, and has a sample recording up on SoundCloud:
First recording using Rochelle Salt piezo crystal made from baking soda and cream of tartar by leafcutterjohn

Also, and I don’t say these words very often, here’s a brilliant YouTube comment:

wait… mounting the crystal in place… THIS IS HOW THE BLACK MESA INCIDENT STARTED! :O

(Google it if you don’t get it.)

More great info from Leafcutter John:
Leafcutter’s DIY Steel Can Hydrophone & Preamp. Step-by-step guide
Shit I’m a Geek / The joy of Piezoelectricity [good background on the above]

(Side note: preamp is the really important part of the hydrophone equation, which I managed to screw up recently. Stay tuned for my tale of how to do it right, after I actually do it properly. DIY electronics is no fun, anyway, if you don’t occasionally completely botch it.)

Blue Mic’s new Icicle and subsequent discussion of alternatives like CEntrance’s MicPort Pro has generated some interest and chatter. Matej Isak sends over a review he did of the MicPort Pro:

CEntrance MicPort Pro review [Mono & Stereo]

CEntrance links to some other good reviews online on their product page. Highlights:

• Craig Anderton writes a detailed review for Harmony Central and in March did a short round-up of “fun stuff to plug into your USB bus.”
• Steve Fortner at Keyboard is quite fond of the thing.
• MusicTech gives it a perfect score, even though I’m always suspicious of perfect scores and, well, scores in general.
• Chris Breen likes it at Macworld, as does Joshua Topolsky for Engadget

So, there’s a round-up of people I know and like. I’m still sticking to a dedicated interface, at least until someone makes one of these that doubles as a standalone mic pre. (CEntrance, you listening? I’d even add a little bulk for that, honestly.) Interestingly, one commenter points out that while I didn’t like the lack of a headphone jack for direct monitoring, some people might prefer to listen through the host, so that keeps Blue’s offering in the running.

Certainly, to anyone who thought an XLR-to-USB mic pre wouldn’t appeal to anyone, this proves otherwise.

I’ve personally always been happy carrying around any one of a number of portable USB/FireWire audio interfaces. But as readers pointed out following Blue’s announcement of the Icicle yesterday, various solutions have offered direct mic – to – USB hardware with preamps for connecting a single mic to a single USB port. And several tech blogs picked up on the Icicle announcement, so clearly there’s a need for someone.

The major oversight of the Blue Icicle is that (as near as I can tell) it doesn’t have a headphone jack. Result: the only way to monitor the microphone would be through your computer, which adds latency. And I’m a little hesitant on what the quality of the pre is, as well.

The Icicle isn’t your only option. Readers point to the Mic Mate Pro from MXL, and I’ve heard very positive stories about CEntrance’s MicPortPro. The MicPortPro gets high marks on audio fidelity, both anecdotally from those we’ve heard from and in reviews from Keyboard, TapeOp, and the like. Ronald Stewart writes to say he uses it with his Indamixx, the UMPC-based, tiny portable PC, so I imagine it’s an interesting option for those who like obsessive degrees of portability.

Most importantly, the MicPortPro corrects a number of the weaker points of the Icicle. It has the headphone jack for zero-latency monitoring. It’s made of aluminum, and seems to be pretty solid in build. It supports 24-bit/96kHz recording. ASIO drivers are available on PC (still not sure about that on the Icicle). And it has nice, dedicated knobs for gain. There’s even a software driver for aggregating more than one MicPortPro. It’s roughly twice the cost of the Icicle, but if I were in the market for such a thing, the MicPortPro looks like it wins on just about every single point.

My one gripe: it’s nice to have the unit bus-powered, but why not add the ability to put in batteries so it can double as a standalone mic pre when you aren’t using your computer?

Ultimately, a dedicated mic pre and/or dedicated audio interface seems more functional to me for most folks. But I’m pleasantly surprised to see the MicPortPro is able to make this category make a bit of sense for those who want it. The bottom line seems to be for some people, portability is everything, even just to supplement gear you’ve already got.

CEntrance Product Page

Thanks to everyone who sent in feedback. As always, keep it coming. Even the grumbling – I may grumble back, but grumble away. You’re among friends.

First up, the new Mikey from Blue Microphones is a stereo condenser mic designed for the iPod (4G, 5G, 6G, iPod Nano 2G, 3G and iPod Classic). It’s not for the new iPod touch, but basically other iPod models are ready to go. You can’t set gain beyond three pre-determined levels, but it does double as a speaker and has a positionable head. I’m not sure I’d use it for really serious recording situations – Blue’s lower-end mics haven’t performed quite as well as their high-end models, as you’d expect – but it appears to be a pretty nice solution for a lot of situations, and fantastic for recording practice sessions and the like. At US$79.99 list, it’s practically an impulse buy. I’m curious to hear how it stacks up to the cheaper digital recorders out there, like those from Zoom.

Blue Microphones [A product page for Mikey was unavailable at press time]

The Mikey isn’t for the iPhone / iPod touch, but we have seen a slew of new recording apps out there, like Griffin’s iTalk (as seen on ZDNet from our friend Jason O’Grady). Most of these are pretty dead-simple – the Apple SDK includes a recording mechanism – so the primary engineering challenge is just writing a tool to get the audio from your mobile device to your computer, since (cough) Apple left that bit out.

Sonoma Wire Works’ FourTrack is a different animal. It’s a full-blown four-track recorder (well, at least you can record one track at a time and play back four). I could try to talk about it, but the talented Eliot Van Buskirk over at Wired.com’s Listening Post does a great job:

The New Hotness: FourTrack Audio Recorder for iPhone, iPod Touch

Sonoma FourTrack: Product Page, iTunes App Store

Here’s the catch with FourTrack and a lot of these apps, though: what do you do for a mic? Options are extremely limited on the iPhone and second-generation iPod touch – at least until Blue Mics releases a Mikey for iPhone. Pro options, or anything coming close to it, are out of the question.

And those of us with first-generation iPod touch models are entirely out of luck. While prior to 2.x firmware, hackers had managed to make DIY solutions for mic support on the first-generation iPod touch, that solution is still missing on the second-generation unit. Part of the fault appears to be Apple’s: they left out software support in the earlier models, and they aren’t exactly making third-party hardware makers’ job easy, either. It’s a problem with phones in general: the Google Android-based G1 from TMobile doesn’t even have a standard headphone jack, let alone mic input.

For that reason, I can’t personally comment on the FourTrack because my iPod is useless with it; I defer to Eliot for that. But here’s the feature list – US$9.99 and (with the iPod touch 2nd generation, required) a third-party mic sets you up.

• Track Count – 4
• Track Length – unlimited
• Recording Quality – 16 bit, 44.1 kHz
• Calibrated Meters – accurately monitor record and playback levels
• Recording Clip Lights – ensure input levels do not cause distortion
• Calibrated Faders – accurately adjust playback level of each track
• Pan Control – move tracks from left to right
• Time Line – seek to anywhere in your song instantly
• Shuttle Wheel – accurately move within your song
• Slide-to-Record – prevents over-writing your tracks
• Latency Compensation – accurate to within 1ms
• Compressor-Limiter – automatically fattens sound of the output mix
• Song List – unlimited song count
• WiFi Sync – copy recordings to a desktop computer

Part of the beauty of mobile apps is that someone will find some novel use for them. But for many, I fear that mobile recording could just be a novelty. I’m all for multi-function devices, but I don’t see iApps coming close to the array of dedicated mobile recorders out there any time soon; it appears more hassle than convenience, which would be the whole point. FourTrack is definitely the most serious app I’ve seen yet, but I still think recording may be best left to recorders, at least for now.

Have you ever plugged your headphones into your microphone? Well now you can! Besides winning a nomination for longest alphanumeric name, the USB2200A microphone from sE Electronics features a 1/8” headphone output and volume control on its body. This allows zero latency monitoring from the Class A 1” cardioid condenser mic while recording via USB. The mix/monitor level can be adjusted with audio software.

But wait! This mic also has a simultaneous XLR output. The capsule can be powered either through USB or XLR phantom power. Add a 100Hz roll off filter and 10dB pad and this is one versatile mic for $499 MSRP.

More at www.seelectronics.com

Ed.: Finally someone gets it — the “microphone as recorder” concept wasn’t complete if you couldn’t monitor what you’re doing. And the lack of XLR made most of these mics useless. This model addresses both, and might actually be a quality mic, to boot. sE has made some nice stuff, so this could be one mic-recorder that’s worth using. We’ll watch for availability and give it a try. -PK

Here in the blogosphere, we only care about up-to-the-minute technology, right?

On the contrary. We still find these talking balloons pretty damn cool. (via a huge post on the MIT Media Lab from Make:blog — go ahead, waste the rest of the afternoon)

State-of-the-art 1995 technology, so get cracking: a piezo sensor
mounted to the front face of the balloon lets the ballon's aluminized
mylar body act as both microphone and speaker. In layman's terms: the
balloons can talk to each other. (Don't say "I invented talking
baloons" and expect to get far in academia, though. The proper term, as
in creator Joseph Paradiso's article for the IBM Systems Journal –
fine bathroom reading, by the way — is "The Interactive Balloon;
Sensing, Actuation and Behavior in a Common Object.")

Yes, that's right, they don't talk to each other, they actuate each
other. Now go, read the paper, and build yourself some baloon speakers
for your next gig.

There's nothing I hate more than wading through industry hype, so what a pleasant surprise that Shure microphones has some of the most useful mic info anywhere — minimal marketing included.

This week, Shure brings us "What DJs should know about microphones,"
a textbook-classic but friendly look at mics annotated by the Needelz
Brothers. Nice to see this geared at DJs, though there's good advice
for anyone (particularly doing electronic music in clubs).

Best moment: the Needelz share their favorite home vocal recording
trick, singing into a messy closet and using blankets to cover the
doors. Think they're nuts? Try it — I've found for simple vocal
recordings, while of course real acoustic treatments are preferable,
blankets and such placed around the mic location do actually work.
(Just don't try treating your studio with egg crates — doesn't work.)

Go join up for the Shure Notes mailing list for more gems like this. And yes, I love my SM57 (among others), thank you.

All this talk of VSTs and Oasys keyboards making you wistful?
Why not honor Presidents' Day (and St. Expeditus, patron saint of
procrastination — no, really) by journeying back to the golden age of radio and recording. Coutant.org
is an absurdly huge repository of vintage microphones (with pictures
and even comparative recordings), photographs, and links chronicling
audio's golden years. If you love big, clunky mics with the NBC radio
letters on the side, you'll feel right at home — and even non-techies
may find a tear in their eye surveying the long list of celebrities
intoning and crooning into the classic gear of yesteryear.

Because really, the only good mic is a ribbon mic.

Looking for a cheap, side-address, large-diaphragm, cardiod condenser
mic for vocals.  Wondering if CDM readers/authors might have some
advice.  Currently considering…

$200
Audio Technica AT3035
Blue 8-Ball
Rode NT1-A
Studio Projects C1

$100
Audio Technica AT2020
Kel HM-1
Studio Projects B1

…I'm leaning toward the Studio Projects pieces, or perhaps the Kel.

Anyone want to sound in? A number of good choices here. -PK