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Re: contact mic

Subject: Re: contact mic
From: "Aaron Ximm" aaron_gmail
Date: Sun Oct 1, 2006 12:24 pm (PDT)
On 9/30/06, faza.rm <> wrote:
>
> I am doin this installation for a gallery. There will be a subwoofer inth=
e
> middle of the gallery
> and a pile of sand around it.. the viewers are required to walk on the
> sand..
> I am trying to buy contact mics and burry them in the sand so that the
> sounds of their
> footstep will be picked up and transmitted to the speaker...
> However the contact mics that  i got does not seem to be as senstive as i
> thought it would
> be.. i am just fixing them onto the floor..


This a great question for the phonography and perhaps lowercase-sound
mailing lists, where more people do this kind of work...

I would first try bonding the mics to a large thin sheet of metal and put
the sand over that. A tight coupling will let the sheet act as one large
sensative receptor. You still may find you need a lot of gain however.

Australian sound artist Joel Stern told me recently about an altoids-tin bo=
x
he got as a direct-in (DI) box for using piezoelectric contact mics, he
called it a preamp but I was wondering if was doing impedance matching sinc=
e
it changed the frequency response of his piezos. He got it from someone
online for around US$25, but I don't remember what they're called, alas.

 best,
  aaron

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