What are good microphones for vlogging?

Dynamic and condenser microphones?

• I have been researching how microphones work, particularily dynamic and condenser microphones. Now I know that condenser microphones have two plates that act as a capacitor and when you speak they get closer yadda yadda yadda. Now this makes the voltage change between 0 and (just for the sake of explaining it) 1. Now, with dynamic microphones, there's a coil of wire connected to the diaphragm and when you speak it moves this coil of wire over a magnet. This creates a voltage. What I am wondering is with the magnet moving back and forth wouldn't this make the voltage go switch between negative and positive depending on the direction of the coil movement? And if so, does it matter if it does change? I always thought that the voltage had to be between 0 and (once again, for sake of explanation) 1.

• Answer:

  In actual fact, what is generated by either type of microphone is a voltage that varies in amplitude from 0 when the diaphragm is not moving, up to (your adopted level) of 1 volt. But it is DC., and conventionally goes positive when excited. The magnet in the dynamic microphone is not centralised over the coil, it is nearer one pole. It generates the voltage by moving the coil in the field of the magnet, yes, but all in one direction only. A "condenser" microphone is always associated with a FET transistor, most often within the microphone insert casing itself. It has to be supplied with a DC voltage to function, it is not self- generating. It serves to vary that DC voltage in sympathy with the sound pressure on the "condenser" (capacitor). It may therefore, have a "standing" voltage as its base line. A speaker and a dynamic microphone are electrically similar in operation, often speakers are employed as microphones in simple apparatus.