One of the most often asked questions from people getting started in Pro Audio is “What’s the difference between Dynamic and Condenser Microphones?”

I grew up surrounded by talented craftsmen, professional audio engineers, pro working musicians and recording artists. One day at the speaker shop my father demonstrated how a dynamic mic works and he explained it so even I could understand it. He took a small speaker driver, I think it was a little extended range 6″ woofer and he wired a mic cable to it. Then he plugged it into a mic input on a test system we had setup in our prototyping room. Tada!!  Instant Dynamic Microphone… kind of. Not the best sound but it worked and I was amazed. I think that was about the same time he explained the difference between shielded cable and unshielded cable.

Being the geeky kid I was I immediately exploited this new knowledge by gathering up as many small cheap speaker drivers as I could get my hands on. I proceeded to wire up a system of surveillance “microphones” and my listening array so I could monitor important goings on around the property… and wherever I could hide a little speaker wrapped in a baggie.  It worked well enough that I got in trouble as I often did.

In the day we worked with the engineers at Six Flags Over Mid America. Dad helped them wire the Screaming Eagle with small speakers as cheap “Hidden Microphones” so they could monitor the roller coaster at night. Why? Because kids were sneaking in and climbing the supports in the evenings and the use of this Dynamic Speaker Mic Setup helped put an immediate stop to the problem.

So if you are 12 and need to setup cheap microphones to spy on your friends or you need to listen to your Roller Coaster in the evenings, I highly suggest using small cheap speakers as microphones. But if you are looking for something that helps reproduce and record at a higher quality, the graphic below helps explain more about these 2 microphone types.

The questions that usually follow “What’s the difference between a Dynamic Microphone and Condenser Microphone?” usually refers to when to use what and why. A great place to start is to understand the basics as well as some advantages and disadvantages of both.

In 1877 Thomas Edison changes history when he plays “Mary’s Little Lamb” with tinfoil wrapped around a rotating cylinder. It was the birth of the Phonograph. 10 years later Emile Berliner patents the gramophone, a flat-disc invention making multiple duplication possible.

Gramophone, Kinetophone, Vitaphone, Blattnerphone may be names you’ve never heard of, but these were technological breakthroughs and of course industry buzzwords / trademarks of the times. They were all advances that led to what we know of today as modern Audio Engineering.

It’s been a very interesting journey…

1958 – Stereo Disk

1962 – Time Code Format

1963 – Compact Cassette

1965 – Noise Reduction

1972 – Digital Tape

1978 – CD – Compact Disc

1980 – Multitrack Recorders

1982 – Recording Equipment

1986 – Digital Consoles

1994 – Promix 01

1999 – Audio DVD

Note – A post “Digitalized – A Visual Representation Of The Evolution Of Audio Formats” notes that the CD was invented in 1982. I’m checking into more details on the invention of the CD. The fact that it was invented so long ago and did not become affordable enough to become main stream is extremely interesting.