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5,301 | Operating systems sometimes apply acceleration, referred to as "ballistics", to the motion reported by the mouse. For example, versions of Windows prior to Windows XP doubled reported values above a configurable threshold, and then optionally doubled them again above a second configurable threshold. These doublings app... |
5,302 | Engelbart's original mouse did not require a mousepad; the mouse had two large wheels which could roll on virtually any surface. However, most subsequent mechanical mice starting with the steel roller ball mouse have required a mousepad for optimal performance. |
5,303 | The mousepad, the most common mouse accessory, appears most commonly in conjunction with mechanical mice, because to roll smoothly the ball requires more friction than common desk surfaces usually provide. So-called "hard mousepads" for gamers or optical/laser mice also exist. |
5,304 | Most optical and laser mice do not require a pad, the notable exception being early optical mice which relied on a grid on the pad to detect movement . Whether to use a hard or soft mousepad with an optical mouse is largely a matter of personal preference. One exception occurs when the desk surface creates problems for... |
5,305 | Some mice also come with small "pads" attached to the bottom surface, also called mouse feet or mouse skates, that help the user slide the mouse smoothly across surfaces. |
5,306 | Around 1981, Xerox included mice with its Xerox Star, based on the mouse used in the 1970s on the Alto computer at Xerox PARC. Sun Microsystems, Symbolics, Lisp Machines Inc., and Tektronix also shipped workstations with mice, starting in about 1981. Later, inspired by the Star, Apple Computer released the Apple Lisa, ... |
5,307 | The Macintosh design, commercially successful and technically influential, led many other vendors to begin producing mice or including them with their other computer products . |
5,308 | The widespread adoption of graphical user interfaces in the software of the 1980s and 1990s made mice all but indispensable for controlling computers. In November 2008, Logitech built their billionth mouse. |
5,309 | The device often functions as an interface for PC-based computer games and sometimes for video game consoles. The Classic Mac OS Desk Accessory Puzzle in 1984 was the first game designed specifically for a mouse. |
5,310 | FPSs naturally lend themselves to separate and simultaneous control of the player's movement and aim, and on computers this has traditionally been achieved with a combination of keyboard and mouse. Players use the X-axis of the mouse for looking left and right, and the Y-axis for looking up and down; the keyboard is u... |
5,311 | Many shooting genre players prefer a mouse over a gamepad analog stick because the wide range of motion offered by a mouse allows for faster and more varied control. Although an analog stick allows the player more granular control, it is poor for certain movements, as the player's input is relayed based on a vector of ... |
5,312 | Some incorrectly ported games or game engines have acceleration and interpolation curves which unintentionally produce excessive, irregular, or even negative acceleration when used with a mouse instead of their native platform's non-mouse default input device. Depending on how deeply hardcoded this misbehavior is, inte... |
5,313 | Due to their similarity to the WIMP desktop metaphor interface for which mice were originally designed, and to their own tabletop game origins, computer strategy games are most commonly played with mice. In particular, real-time strategy and MOBA games usually require the use of a mouse. |
5,314 | The left button usually controls primary fire. If the game supports multiple fire modes, the right button often provides secondary fire from the selected weapon. Games with only a single fire mode will generally map secondary fire to aim down the weapon sights. In some games, the right button may also invoke accessorie... |
5,315 | Players can use a scroll wheel for changing weapons . On most first person shooter games, programming may also assign more functions to additional buttons on mice with more than three controls. A keyboard usually controls movement and other functions such as changing posture. Since the mouse serves for aiming, a mouse... |
5,316 | Many games provide players with the option of mapping their own choice of a key or button to a certain control. An early technique of players, circle strafing, saw a player continuously strafing while aiming and shooting at an opponent by walking in circle around the opponent with the opponent at the center of the circ... |
5,317 | Games using mice for input are so popular that many manufacturers make mice specifically for gaming. Such mice may feature adjustable weights, high-resolution optical or laser components, additional buttons, ergonomic shape, and other features such as adjustable CPI. Mouse Bungees are typically used with gaming mice be... |
5,318 | Many games, such as first- or third-person shooters, have a setting named "invert mouse" or similar which allows the user to look downward by moving the mouse forward and upward by moving the mouse backward . This control system resembles that of aircraft control sticks, where pulling back causes pitch up and pushing ... |
5,319 | After id Software's commercial hit of Doom, which did not support vertical aiming, competitor Bungie's Marathon became the first first-person shooter to support using the mouse to aim up and down. Games using the Build engine had an option to invert the Y-axis. The "invert" feature actually made the mouse behave in a m... |
5,320 | In 1988, the VTech Socrates educational video game console featured a wireless mouse with an attached mouse pad as an optional controller used for some games. In the early 1990s, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game system featured a mouse in addition to its controllers. A mouse was also released for the ... |
5,321 | A microphone, colloquially called a mic , or mike, is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and public events, motion picture production, live and recorded audio engineering, sound ... |
5,322 | Several types of microphone are used today, which employ different methods to convert the air pressure variations of a sound wave to an electrical signal. The most common are the dynamic microphone, which uses a coil of wire suspended in a magnetic field; the condenser microphone, which uses the vibrating diaphragm as... |
5,323 | In order to speak to larger groups of people, a need arose to increase the volume of the human voice. The earliest devices used to achieve this were acoustic megaphones. Some of the first examples, from fifth-century-BC Greece, were theater masks with horn-shaped mouth openings that acoustically amplified the voice of... |
5,324 | In 1856, Italian inventor Antonio Meucci developed a dynamic microphone based on the generation of electric current by moving a coil of wire to various depths in a magnetic field. This method of modulation was also the most enduring method for the technology of the telephone as well. Speaking of his device, Meucci wrot... |
5,325 | In 1861, German inventor Johann Philipp Reis built an early sound transmitter that used a metallic strip attached to a vibrating membrane that would produce intermittent current. Better results were achieved in 1876 with the "liquid transmitter" design in early telephones from Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray – t... |
5,326 | The first microphone that enabled proper voice telephony was the carbon microphone. This was independently developed by David Edward Hughes in England and Emile Berliner and Thomas Edison in the US. Although Edison was awarded the first patent in mid-1877, Hughes had demonstrated his working device in front of many w... |
5,327 | In 1916, E.C. Wente of Western Electric developed the next breakthrough with the first condenser microphone. In 1923, the first practical moving coil microphone was built. The Marconi-Sykes magnetophone, developed by Captain H. J. Round, became the standard for BBC studios in London. This was improved in 1930 by Alan B... |
5,328 | Also in 1923, the ribbon microphone was introduced, another electromagnetic type, believed to have been developed by Harry F. Olson, who applied the concept used in a ribbon speaker to making a microphone. Over the years these microphones were developed by several companies, most notably RCA that made large advancement... |
5,329 | During the second half of the 20th century, development advanced quickly with the Shure Brothers bringing out the SM58 and SM57. |
5,330 | Microphones are categorized by their transducer principle, such as condenser, dynamic, etc., and by their directional characteristics. Sometimes other characteristics such as diaphragm size, intended use or orientation of the principal sound input to the principal axis of the microphone are used to describe the microp... |
5,331 | The condenser microphone, invented at Western Electric in 1916 by E. C. Wente, is also called a capacitor microphone or electrostatic microphone—capacitors were historically called condensers. The diaphragm acts as one plate of a capacitor, and audio vibrations produce changes in the distance between the plates. Becaus... |
5,332 | Condenser microphones span the range from telephone transmitters through inexpensive karaoke microphones to high-fidelity recording microphones. They generally produce a high-quality audio signal and are now the popular choice in laboratory and recording studio applications. The inherent suitability of this technology ... |
5,333 | Condenser microphones require a power source, provided either via microphone inputs on equipment as phantom power or from a small battery. Power is necessary for establishing the capacitor plate voltage and is also needed to power the microphone electronics . Condenser microphones are also available with two diaphragms... |
5,334 | There are two main categories of condenser microphones, depending on the method of extracting the audio signal from the transducer: DC-biased microphones, and radio frequency or high frequency condenser microphones. |
5,335 | With a DC-biased condenser microphone, the plates are biased with a fixed charge . The voltage maintained across the capacitor plates changes with the vibrations in the air, according to the capacitance equation , where Q = charge in coulombs, C = capacitance in farads and V = potential difference in volts. A nearly co... |
5,336 | Within the time frame of the capacitance change , the charge is practically constant and the voltage across the capacitor changes instantaneously to reflect the change in capacitance. The voltage across the capacitor varies above and below the bias voltage. The voltage difference between the bias and the capacitor is s... |
5,337 | RF condenser microphones use a comparatively low RF voltage, generated by a low-noise oscillator. The signal from the oscillator may either be amplitude modulated by the capacitance changes produced by the sound waves moving the capsule diaphragm, or the capsule may be part of a resonant circuit that modulates the freq... |
5,338 | An electret microphone is a type of condenser microphone invented by Gerhard Sessler and Jim West at Bell laboratories in 1962. The externally applied charge used for a conventional condenser microphone is replaced by a permanent charge in an electret material. An electret is a ferroelectric material that has been perm... |
5,339 | Due to their good performance and ease of manufacture, hence low cost, the vast majority of microphones made today are electret microphones; a semiconductor manufacturer estimates annual production at over one billion units. They are used in many applications, from high-quality recording and lavalier use to built-in m... |
5,340 | Unlike other capacitor microphones, they require no polarizing voltage, but often contain an integrated preamplifier that does require power . This preamplifier is frequently phantom powered in sound reinforcement and studio applications. Monophonic microphones designed for personal computers , sometimes called multime... |
5,341 | A valve microphone is a condenser microphone that uses a vacuum tube amplifier. They remain popular with enthusiasts of tube sound. |
5,342 | The dynamic microphone works via electromagnetic induction. They are robust, relatively inexpensive and resistant to moisture. This, coupled with their potentially high gain before feedback, makes them ideal for on-stage use. |
5,343 | Dynamic microphones use the same dynamic principle as in a loudspeaker, only reversed. A small movable induction coil, positioned in the magnetic field of a permanent magnet, is attached to the diaphragm. When sound enters through the windscreen of the microphone, the sound wave moves the diaphragm. When the diaphragm ... |
5,344 | Ribbon microphones use a thin, usually corrugated metal ribbon suspended in a magnetic field. The ribbon is electrically connected to the microphone's output, and its vibration within the magnetic field generates the electrical signal. Ribbon microphones are similar to moving coil microphones in the sense that both pro... |
5,345 | Other directional patterns are produced by enclosing one side of the ribbon in an acoustic trap or baffle, allowing sound to reach only one side. The classic RCA Type 77-DX microphone has several externally adjustable positions of the internal baffle, allowing the selection of several response patterns ranging from "fi... |
5,346 | The carbon microphone was the earliest type of microphone. The carbon button microphone , uses a capsule or button containing carbon granules pressed between two metal plates like the Berliner and Edison microphones. A voltage is applied across the metal plates, causing a small current to flow through the carbon. One o... |
5,347 | Unlike other microphone types, the carbon microphone can also be used as a type of amplifier, using a small amount of sound energy to control a larger amount of electrical energy. Carbon microphones found use as early telephone repeaters, making long-distance phone calls possible in the era before vacuum tubes. Called ... |
5,348 | A crystal microphone or piezo microphone uses the phenomenon of piezoelectricity—the ability of some materials to produce a voltage when subjected to pressure—to convert vibrations into an electrical signal. An example of this is potassium sodium tartrate, which is a piezoelectric crystal that works as a transducer, bo... |
5,349 | Piezoelectric transducers are often used as contact microphones to amplify sound from acoustic musical instruments, to sense drum hits, for triggering electronic samples, and to record sound in challenging environments, such as underwater under high pressure. Saddle-mounted pickups on acoustic guitars are generally pie... |
5,350 | A fiber-optic microphone converts acoustic waves into electrical signals by sensing changes in light intensity, instead of sensing changes in capacitance or magnetic fields as with conventional microphones. |
5,351 | During operation, light from a laser source travels through an optical fiber to illuminate the surface of a reflective diaphragm. Sound vibrations of the diaphragm modulate the intensity of light reflecting off the diaphragm in a specific direction. The modulated light is then transmitted over a second optical fiber to... |
5,352 | Fiber-optic microphones do not react to or influence any electrical, magnetic, electrostatic or radioactive fields . The fiber-optic microphone design is therefore ideal for use in areas where conventional microphones are ineffective or dangerous, such as inside industrial turbines or in magnetic resonance imaging equ... |
5,353 | Fiber-optic microphones are robust, resistant to environmental changes in heat and moisture, and can be produced for any directionality or impedance matching. The distance between the microphone's light source and its photodetector may be up to several kilometers without need for any preamplifier or another electrical ... |
5,354 | Fiber-optic microphones are used in very specific application areas such as for infrasound monitoring and noise cancellation. They have proven especially useful in medical applications, such as allowing radiologists, staff and patients within the powerful and noisy magnetic field to converse normally, inside the MRI su... |
5,355 | Laser microphones are often portrayed in movies as spy gadgets because they can be used to pick up sound at a distance from the microphone equipment. A laser beam is aimed at the surface of a window or other plane surface that is affected by sound. The vibrations of this surface change the angle at which the beam is re... |
5,356 | In a more robust and expensive implementation, the returned light is split and fed to an interferometer, which detects movement of the surface by changes in the optical path length of the reflected beam. The former implementation is a tabletop experiment; the latter requires an extremely stable laser and precise optics... |
5,357 | A new type of laser microphone is a device that uses a laser beam and smoke or vapor to detect sound vibrations in free air. On August 25, 2009, U.S. patent 7,580,533 issued for a Particulate Flow Detection Microphone based on a laser-photocell pair with a moving stream of smoke or vapor in the laser beam's path. Sound... |
5,358 | Early microphones did not produce intelligible speech, until Alexander Graham Bell made improvements including a variable-resistance microphone/transmitter. Bell's liquid transmitter consisted of a metal cup filled with water with a small amount of sulfuric acid added. A sound wave caused the diaphragm to move, forcin... |
5,359 | The MEMS microphone is also called a microphone chip or silicon microphone. A pressure-sensitive diaphragm is etched directly into a silicon wafer by MEMS processing techniques and is usually accompanied with an integrated preamplifier. Most MEMS microphones are variants of the condenser microphone design. Digital MEM... |
5,360 | More recently, since the 2010s, there has been increased interest and research into making piezoelectric MEMS microphones which are a significant architectural and material change from existing condenser style MEMS designs. |
5,361 | In a plasma microphone a plasma arc of ionized gas is used. The sound waves cause variations in the pressure around the plasma in turn causing variations in temperature which alter the conductance of the plasma. These variations in conductance can be picked up as variations superimposed on the electrical supply to the ... |
5,362 | A loudspeaker, a transducer that turns an electrical signal into sound waves, is the functional opposite of a microphone. Since a conventional speaker is similar in construction to a dynamic microphone , speakers can actually work "in reverse" as microphones. Reciprocity applies, so the resulting microphone has the sam... |
5,363 | However, there is at least one practical application that exploits those weaknesses: the use of a medium-size woofer placed closely in front of a "kick drum" in a drum set to act as a microphone. A commercial product example is the Yamaha Subkick, a 6.5-inch woofer shock-mounted into a 10" drum shell used in front o... |
5,364 | The inner elements of a microphone are the primary source of differences in directivity. A pressure microphone uses a diaphragm between a fixed internal volume of air and the environment and responds uniformly to pressure from all directions, so it is said to be omnidirectional. A pressure-gradient microphone uses a di... |
5,365 | A microphone's directionality or polar pattern indicates how sensitive it is to sounds arriving at different angles about its central axis. The polar patterns illustrated above represent the locus of points in polar coordinates that produce the same signal level output in the microphone if a given sound pressure level... |
5,366 | Some microphone designs combine several principles in creating the desired polar pattern. This ranges from shielding by the housing itself to electronically combining dual membranes. |
5,367 | An omnidirectional microphone's response is generally considered to be a perfect sphere in three dimensions. In the real world, this is not the case. As with directional microphones, the polar pattern for an "omnidirectional" microphone is a function of frequency. The body of the microphone is not infinitely small and... |
5,368 | The wavelength of sound at 10 kHz is 1.4" . The smallest measuring microphones are often 1/4" in diameter, which practically eliminates directionality even up to the highest frequencies. Omnidirectional microphones, unlike cardioids, do not employ resonant cavities as delays, and so can be considered the "purest" micr... |
5,369 | Areas of application: studios, old churches, theaters, on-site TV interviews, etc. |
5,370 | An example of a nondirectional microphone is the round black eight ball. |
5,371 | A unidirectional microphone is primarily sensitive to sounds from only one direction. The diagram above illustrates a number of these patterns. The microphone faces upwards in each diagram. The sound intensity for a particular frequency is plotted for angles radially from 0 to 360°. |
5,372 | The most common unidirectional microphone is a cardioid microphone, so named because the sensitivity pattern is "heart-shaped" . The cardioid family of microphones are commonly used as vocal or speech microphones since they are good at rejecting sounds from other directions. In three dimensions, the cardioid is shaped ... |
5,373 | The cardioid is effectively a superposition of an omnidirectional and a figure-8 microphone; for sound waves coming from the back, the negative signal from the figure-8 cancels the positive signal from the omnidirectional element, whereas, for sound waves coming from the front, the two add to each other. However, in ... |
5,374 | By combining the two components in different ratios, any pattern between omni and figure-8 can be achieved, which comprise the first-order cardioid family. Common shapes include: |
5,375 | Three such cardioid microphones/hydrophones could be orthogonally oriented as a collocated triad to improve the gain and also create a steerable beam pattern. |
5,376 | "Figure-8" or bi-directional microphones receive sound equally from both the front and back of the element. Most ribbon microphones are of this pattern. In principle they do not respond to sound pressure at all, only to the change in pressure between front and back; since sound arriving from the side reaches front and... |
5,377 | Shotgun microphones are the most highly directional of simple first-order unidirectional types. At low frequencies, they have the classic polar response of a hypercardioid, while at medium and higher frequencies an interference tube gives them an increased forward response. This is achieved by a process of cancellatio... |
5,378 | Several approaches have been developed for effectively using a microphone in less-than-ideal acoustic spaces, which often suffer from excessive reflections from one or more of the surfaces that make up the space. If the microphone is placed in, or very close to, one of these boundaries, the reflections from that surfa... |
5,379 | While a boundary microphone was initially implemented using an omnidirectional element, it is also possible to mount a directional microphone close enough to the surface to gain some of the benefits of this technique while retaining the directional properties of the element. Crown's trademark on this approach is Phase ... |
5,380 | A lavalier microphone is made for hands-free operation. These small microphones are worn on the body. Originally, they were held in place with a lanyard worn around the neck, but more often they are fastened to clothing with a clip, pin, tape or magnet. The lavalier cord may be hidden by clothes and either run to an RF... |
5,381 | A wireless microphone transmits the audio as a radio or optical signal rather than via a cable. It usually sends its signal using a small radio transmitter to a nearby receiver connected to the sound system, but it can also use infrared waves if the transmitter and receiver are within sight of each other. |
5,382 | A contact microphone picks up vibrations directly from a solid surface or object, as opposed to sound vibrations carried through air. One use for this is to detect sounds of a very low level, such as those from small objects or insects. The microphone commonly consists of a magnetic transducer, contact plate and conta... |
5,383 | A parabolic microphone uses a parabolic reflector to collect and focus sound waves onto a microphone receiver, in much the same way that a parabolic antenna does with radio waves. Typical uses of this microphone, which has unusually focused front sensitivity and can pick up sounds from many meters away, include nature... |
5,384 | A stereo microphone integrates two microphones in one unit to produce a stereophonic signal. A stereo microphone is often used for broadcast applications or field recording where it would be impractical to configure two separate condenser microphones in a classic X-Y configuration for stereophonic recording. Some such... |
5,385 | A noise-canceling microphone is a highly directional design intended for noisy environments. One such use is in aircraft cockpits where they are normally installed as boom microphones on headsets. Another use is in live event support on loud concert stages for vocalists involved with live performances. Many noise-canc... |
5,386 | Various standard techniques are used with microphones used in sound reinforcement at live performances, or for recording in a studio or on a motion picture set. By suitable arrangement of one or more microphones, desirable features of the sound to be collected can be kept, while rejecting unwanted sounds. |
5,387 | Microphones containing active circuitry, such as most condenser microphones, require power to operate the active components. The first of these used vacuum-tube circuits with a separate power supply unit, using a multi-pin cable and connector. With the advent of solid-state amplification, the power requirements were gr... |
5,388 | The most common connectors used by microphones are: |
5,389 | Some microphones use other connectors, such as a 5-pin XLR, or mini XLR for connection to portable equipment. Some lavalier microphones use a proprietary connector for connection to a wireless transmitter, such as a radio pack. Since 2005, professional-quality microphones with USB connections have begun to appear, des... |
5,390 | When choosing a pre-amplifier for a certain microphone, the microphone's impedance must be known. Impedance is a frequency-dependent electrical characteristic, measured in ohms , that relates voltage to current. When not concerned with power transfer, signals are generally transferred as varying voltages and this is al... |
5,391 | The main alternative to impedance bridging is impedance matching which maximizes power transfer for a given source impedance. However, this has not been relevant since the early 20th century when amplifiers were very expensive and produced a lot of heat. To reduce the number of amplifiers in telephone lines, power loss... |
5,392 | Different microphones can have vastly different impedances and this depends on the design. In passive microphones, this value relates closely to the impedance of the coil . In active microphones, this value describes the output impedance of its internal amplifier circuitry. |
5,393 | Low impedance is considered under 600 Ω. Medium impedance is considered between 600 Ω and 10 kΩ. High impedance is above 10 kΩ. Owing to their built-in amplifier, condenser microphones typically have an output impedance between 50 and 200 Ω. |
5,394 | The AES42 standard, published by the Audio Engineering Society, defines a digital interface for microphones. Microphones conforming to this standard directly output a digital audio stream through an XLR or XLD male connector, rather than producing an analog output. Digital microphones may be used either with new equipm... |
5,395 | Because of differences in their construction, microphones have their own characteristic responses to sound. This difference in response produces non-uniform phase and frequency responses. Additionally, microphones are not uniformly sensitive to sound pressure and can accept differing levels without distorting. Although... |
5,396 | A frequency response diagram plots the microphone sensitivity in decibels over a range of frequencies , generally for perfectly on-axis sound . Frequency response may be less informatively stated textually like so: "30 Hz–16 kHz ±3 dB". This is interpreted as meaning a nearly flat, linear, plot between the stated frequ... |
5,397 | The self-noise or equivalent input noise level is the sound level that creates the same output voltage as the microphone does in the absence of sound. This represents the lowest point of the microphone's dynamic range, and is particularly important should you wish to record sounds that are quiet. The measure is often s... |
5,398 | The clipping level is an important indicator of maximum usable level, as the 1% total harmonic distortion figure usually quoted under max SPL is really a very mild level of distortion, quite inaudible especially on brief high peaks. Clipping is much more audible. For some microphones, the clipping level may be much hi... |
5,399 | The dynamic range of a microphone is the difference in SPL between the noise floor and the maximum SPL. If stated on its own, for example, "120 dB", it conveys significantly less information than having the self-noise and maximum SPL figures individually. |
5,400 | Sensitivity indicates how well the microphone converts acoustic pressure to an output voltage. A high sensitivity microphone creates more voltage and so needs less amplification at the mixer or recording device. This is a practical concern but is not directly an indication of the microphone's quality, and in fact the ... |
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