The Museum of Microphones

[Drew Stephenson]

I think this is probably the best place for this thread, but Mods please move if not.

Stewart Tavener (of Extinct Audio and XAudia fame - and I think a member of this forum) has just opened up the online museum of microphones:
https://www.momics.org/
All based on his own collection, with over 200 weird and wonderful examples in there so far - dating right back to 1876!

Well worth a browse.

[James Perrett]

That's interesting... I wonder if he wants any more?

I'd also love to hear samples from a few more of them - particularly the Reslo RV.

[Drew Stephenson]

It's a permanently ongoing project so the answers are probably yes, and if you ask nicely!

[jimjazzdad]

Drew: thanks for the link and bringing this site to our attention. A very interesting and personal collection. Just one other comment: why do people designing websites for a technical audience have to use such 'artsy' coding? I found the "About" and "History" pages of this website a bit irritating to read and I could do without the 'night sky' background on the "Collection" page. Maybe trogs who live in perpetually dim studio lighting appreciate this sort of aesthetic but it's hard on my old eyes!

[Martin Walker]

Drew: thanks for the link and bringing this site to our attention. A very interesting and personal collection. Just one other comment: why do people designing websites for a technical audience have to use such 'artsy' coding?

Agreed - thanks Drew, but like jimjazzdad I found the web site design incredibly annoying, and despite the excellent idea, won't be going back.

To me it felt like having to play a video game to make any progress (especially all the scrolling action required to reveal more detail in the About page), and within a few seconds I was half expecting a boss monster to emerge from the gloom that I'd have to dispatch with some heavy-duty mouse button pressing.

No doubt Stewart Tavener (I think that's the correct spelling, although the scribbly font chosen makes it hard to be sure) thought this design was great/clever/artsy when it was first shown to him, but I'm certain he'll get far more footfall if he can revert to a more sober presentation.

[Hugh Robjohns]

Thirded! A very frustrating website and way too many garish typefaces.

[Chet Leeway]

Clearly a "mobile first" design. Frustrating on a landscape screen. Looks neat on a mobile, in vertical format, but even then there are design errors like touch to zoom provoking scrolling at the same time. Shame, since the concept is interesting. The ability to compare recordings of the same source on different mics side by side would be very nice.

[rggillespie]

Strange I didn't have any problems with the site looking at it on my work pc screen, easy to read, scroll about and navigate. Seems a very useful thing to have available.

[Watchmaker]

Seems a very generous undertaking to me. Personal preferences aside, it may be that the "artsy" coding is a by-product of the "minimum viable product" mantra IT dev teams live by. Gawd knows that for most IT products the UX is crap, customer service is a joke, and documentation is all but non existent so, for my own part, I'll cheer this fellow on and forgive minor quibbles about having to decipher design choices on some off the shelf web platform.

Eye on the prize and all that. Great collection of mics, tons of work put in to put this all together. Thanks for the share Drew.

[Arpangel]

See he has the Marconi AXBT, he refurbished two of them for me, can’t praise him enough.

[Xaudia]

Hi guys

Thanks for sharing this, and for your feedback and kind words.

A few of notes.

The MoMics website was launched only two weeks ago so there are inevitably still a few techinical gremlins to be ironed out. It will keep evolving and growing.

At launch we have over 200 microphones, 2000 photographs and about 150 sound recordings (mostly me!). Needless to say it was a big job and I had a lot of help from our intern, Sam, who took most of the photos.

I love the quirky design (which is a good job because I paid for it). It was built from scratch by a friend and is not off the shelf. The art design is based around Blue Note era jazz album covers. The 'about' and 'history' sections are deliberately fun and experimental. (If you didn't find the end of level boss then keep going.)

If you want to skip the 'arty' stuff and get straight to the meat then you can go straight to the collection at https://www.momics.org/collection
Use the filter and search section at the top to search for specific entries.

Footfall is nice but not important - there is no advertising or income from this. The only motivation here is to share some knowledge, some of which was hard won.

Next year there will be a book on how to repair ribbon mics. Hopefully when I retire these things will make things easier for others.

Have fun.

Stewart Tavener
Xaudia / Extinct / MoMics

[Martin Walker]

I love the quirky design (which is a good job because I paid for it). It was built from scratch by a friend and is not off the shelf. The art design is based around Blue Note era jazz album covers. The 'about' and 'history' sections are deliberately fun and experimental. (If you didn't find the end of level boss then keep going.)

If you want to skip the 'arty' stuff and get straight to the meat then you can go straight to the collection at https://www.momics.org/collection
Use the filter and search section at the top to search for specific entries.

Hi Stewart,

Thanks for the extra info, and for taking the feedback in the spirit in which it was intended

Ironically, your post made a significant difference to my Momics experience - as you say, you can go straight to the COLLECTION by clicking on that link, and the ABOUT and HISTORY sections are indeed deliberately fun and experimental.

Perhaps re-ordering those three links from left to right as COLLECTION HISTORY ABOUT, in line with their importance/relevance, would make some people's first visits less confusing?

Oh, and I'm still searching for that end of level boss

Martin