How Big Does a Parabolic Mic Need To Be?

Have you ever heard that a parabolic microphone needs to be 24 or even 30 inches in diameter to be of any use, or at least to capture human voice? If you are, you're not alone. That's a very common misconception, but it's just  not the case.

I want to take you back to 2013 when we were exhibiting our KLOVER MiK 26, the parabolic microphone, seen on many, if not most sidelines of the football games you see on the weekend. We also introduced our new 16-inch parabolic microphone, the KLOVER MiK 16. It was developed primarily for baseball, but we knew it had a lot of other uses as well.

At that convention a producer stopped by, that did reality TV. He posed the question, "how small can you make one of those and still work?" Well, we went back home and developed a new product called the KLOVER MiK 09, a nine-inch parabolic microphone. It's nine inches on the outside diameter, but the actual working diameter is only eight inches. So according to all the formulas and white papers and everything that's out there, it wouldn't work. It's just common knowledge. Fortunately, I didn't know better. So I just built one. And it worked.

So in 2014, we went back to that same convention and introduced our KLOVER MiK 09. The reaction was very, very interesting. Many walked by, and they wouldn't even look at it. Or if they did, they would snicker and say "That' will never work. It's too small, I'm not even gonna listen."

Well, we're here to tell you that it does work.

This video demonstrates that audio captured with the KLOVER MiK 09 is understandable, and very suitable for many applications.

In this video, you can understand me, you can definitely hear what I'm saying, and I'm six foot from the microphone on a very windy day. A shotgun mic would have had a very difficult time with that wind.

We have more sample clip on the KLOVER MiK 09 page.

If you deal with capturing audio from a considerable distance, and you can't use a boom pole, or you can't put wireless mics on everybody, or you can't pass a microphone from person to person to person, contact us . We'd love to discuss your application and see if we can help you out.

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