3rd edition. — USA, Tab Books, 1986. — 341 p. — ISBN: 0-8306-0475-8, — ISBN: 0-8306-2675-1
Of all the components in a high-fidelity system the microphone is the least appreciated and the least understood. Practically an unwanted orphan in the high-fidelity sound hierarchy, the quality microphone for amateur recording use is a "Johnny come lately," a newcomer. This is not only an odd situation, but one that is inexplicable, for the microphone is the fountainhead, the source, the starting point of all recorded sound-without exception. Every bit of recorded tape, every phonograph record, every compact disc, every broadcast has a single, common ancestry-the microphone. That this state of affairs is shocking is beyond question. It is only when we come to analyze the reasons behind it that we can first begin to understand why the microphone is the last arrival in a long progression of highfidelity components. Quality microphones have always been used in broadcasting stations and recording studios. Until just a few years ago, any musical group that of a professional recording studio. It was in the studio that the wouldbe recordist received his first introduction to a complex maze of electronic instruments. Placed in a situation that was extremely confusing, the recordist had no choice but to be guided by studio directors and recording engineers. It was, and still is, an expensive bit of education, with no assurance of recording success. The recordist went in bewildered and came out clutching a precious master-tape-still bewildered. All that is now in the process of change, fortunately. At one time, tape decks for in home use had severe limitations. And the microphones with which they were supplied came in the same category. But today a number of high-fidelity manufacturers are supplying tape decks for the amateur recordist that are professional in every sense of the word. They are electronically designed to produce recordings that are superb. And accompanying this upward movement in tape deck quality, the manufacturers of the software, the tapes, began to produce tapes with new formulations that extended frequency response and had much higher signal-to-noise ratios. Various noise reducing techniques also became part of the in-home recording scene.