Valve Microphone
Valve or Tube microphones are a different type of Condenser mic. Condenser microphones have a very low electrical signal and need amplification. As such, they have a built-in amplifier that boosts the signal to the level of a regular microphone. Like any other microphone, it is then fed to a pre-amp. The tube in a valve microphone is just the amplification stage inside the microphone itself. The tube saturation produces harmonics that, in the case of high-quality tube microphones, sound very warm and 'musical'. This is despite the fact that they tend to have more total harmonic distortion (THD) than solid-state models. |