The PianoMic™ System provides the following benefits:
• Excellent overall piano sound with uniform level from all strings
• Superb sound with the piano lid up or down
• Tremendous gain before feedback
• Minimal leakage from other instruments surrounding the piano
(with piano lid closed)
• Microphones are not visible from outside the piano
People are astonished when they hear the exceptional sound quality of the
PianoMic™ System with the piano lid closed. Conventional microphones per-
form poorly in a closed piano as there is no single dominant direction from which
sound arrives at the microphone. Every string is a sound source. The sound board
is a large and complex sound source. In addition, sounds are reflected off the pia-
no sides, the sound board and the piano lid multiple times with little attenuation.
Sounds inside a piano are randomly arriving from every possible direction at
similar levels, all at the same time. This is a classic example of a “diffuse sound
field” which is defined as a confined area where there are multiple sound sources
and multiple reflections arriving at the microphone from every angle at similar
levels simultaneously. A microphone that is placed in such a diffuse sound field
has to pickup all of the sound with a proper tonal balance. For optimum results,
this task requires a High Definition Random-Incidence Microphone.
Conventional microphones
(i.e. virtually every micro-
phone used for recording
and live sound) are “Free
Field” microphones, de-
signed to accurately pick
up sounds in front of the
microphone (direct sound)
(See Figure 1).
Random-incidence micro-
phones are designed to re-
spond uniformly to sounds
arriving simultaneously
from all angles, rather than
to the sound coming from
a primary source that is in
front of the microphone.
Random-incidence micro-
phones have exceptional
accuracy and tonal balance
in a diffuse sound field,
where sound arrives from
all directions randomly and
simultaneously.
Figure 2. Random Incidence Microphones Inside a Piano
Figure 1. Conventional “Free Field”Microphones Inside a Piano
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