A super-sensitive contact microphone - 'insect microphone'

摘要

A super-sensitive microphone, the "Insect Microphone", can pick up the footsteps of a crawling insect. It was developed for the purpose of really representing a small insect's world in TV program. The electric-acoustic transducer of moving-coil type is applied to this microphone. It picks up solid-borne sounds instead of air-borne sounds that a ordinary microphone picks up. Air-borne sounds decline more quickly than solid-borne sounds. This microphone picks up the sounds before radiating to the air. Therefore, it can pick up the minute sounds we can't hear in the air. This Insect Microphone has been used to pick up the footstep's sounds of ants antlions and heartbeats of snails, etc.