While the idea of a phantom powered ribbon microphone was enticing enough, we didn’t design the new Active Series mics simply to do something different. This new ribbon microphone technology addresses two major issues common to conventional ribbon microphones - gain and impedance matching.
Gain
Our Active Series ribbon mics are as sensitive as condenser microphones, allowing you to use practically any mic preamplifier or board pre (even those of nominal characteristics). Conventional ribbon microphones are, on average, 15 to 20 dB less sensitive than condenser mics, necessitating the use of high-quality, high-gain microphone preamplifiers for recording softer sound sources like acoustic instruments, vocals and room ambience. The Active Series ribbon mics, starting with the R-122, contain fully balanced, discrete head amplifier systems utilizing ultra-low noise FET’s. This system, designed by David Royer and Rick Perrotta, is extremely quiet, can handle 135 dB SPL and allows our Active Series ribbons to deliver a sensitivity of –38 dB! Go ahead and plug an R-122 into any preamplifier with average gain characteristics - you’ll get full Royer performance regardless of how quiet the sound source, and you’ll have enough gain to drive any recording medium.
Impedance Matching
The electronics in the Active Series ribbons provides a perfect load on the ribbon element at all times, meaning that R-122’s are able to deliver 100% of their full sonic potential regardless of the input characteristics of the following mic-pre. Due to the low-impedance output, Active Series mics can also be used with extremely long cable runs with minimal signal loss.
A good impedance match is critical with ribbon microphones because impedance mis-matching “loads” a ribbon improperly, resulting in loss of low end, diminished body, lowered sensitivity and overall compromised performance. With the Active Series ribbons, the ribbon element lives in a perfect world; it sees an optimum impedance match at all times regardless of the following equipment, so its performance will never be compromised by the effects of improper loading. In addition, the ribbon element can’t be damaged by phantom power, electrical glitches or miswired cables.