Pearl ELM-B Condenser Microphone

Line source loudspeakers are well known in professional audio: they give a good spread of sound laterally but have tightly controlled directivity in a vertical sense. The Pearl linear microphone capsule has some similar properties, though this is not its only advantage. Conventional microphone capsules are round. It's an easy shape to make consistently, but it has one significant disadvantage in that its high degree of symmetry makes the primary resonance quite pronounced. Damping can reduce some of the ills caused by that resonance, but it is still there and most often well within the audio band.

 

Pearl has made rectangular capsules for many years now, but never before with such an extreme (7:1) length/width ratio. The new linear capsule has more than twice the surface area of large-diameter round capsules, giving excellent signal/noise ratio, but avoids their high levels of in-band resonance (the resonance due to end-to-end vibration modes is very weak). In addition, at high frequencies the small width dimension makes for very good uniformity of directional pattern in the lateral sense, while usefully attenuating reflections from floor and ceilings - high frequency signals from above and below the 'line of sight' are almost never of any use! 

 

This means that Pearl's new microphone can deliver a very accurate, uniform and consistent response pattern, with very flat response, low noise and useful attenuation of 'nuisance' reflections. The capsule is used in the new models ELM-B (figure-of-eight) and ELM-C (cardioid) and is highly recommended for stereo recording. The result: exceptional sonic neutrality. Hear it for yourself!

Finished in black chromium. The ELM comes in aluminium case AC01.