welcome: please sign in

Revision 3 as of 2012-04-08 09:04:00

Clear message
location: BootlegMic

bootlegMIC

About bootlegMIC

The bootlegMIC is relatively high quality microphone for impromptu recordings in loud environments with a cellphone. Cellphone microphones tend to be optimized for normal talking levels (for good reason), but with the ever increasing functionality of these devices, they have become a platform for many musical applications, including field recordings. There are a number of professional microphones on the market, but most are targetted a specific phone, and require a specific docking connector. The bootlegMIC aims to be more democratic about this process, and get inexpensive, good sounding microphones into the hands of the people! It plugs directly into the headphone/mic jack, and gives a low distortion, highly attenuated signal, that can work in the loudest environments. The bootlegMIC can be used equally well with a computer or other recording device, but will need a different 1/8" jack than the one supplied with our kits.

Theory of operation

The bootlegMIC uses a standard electret microphone, which is modified for high volume applications. Within an electret microphone, there is a small JFET amplifier, which buffers the audio signal (see our electret microphone primer for more details).