When it comes to DIY projects, nothing beats the thrill of crafting something that rivals expensive commercial products. In the microphone build video below, [Electronoobs] found himself inspired by DIY Perks earlier efforts. He took on the challenge of building a $20 high-quality microphone—a budget-friendly alternative to models priced at $500. The result: an engaging and educational journey that has it’s moments of triumph, it’s challenges, and of course, opportunities for improvement.
The core of the build lies in the JLI-2555 capsule, identical to those found in premium microphones. The process involves assembling a custom PCB for the amplifier, a selection of high-quality capacitors, and designing lightweight yet shielded wiring to minimize noise. [Electronoobs] also demonstrates the importance of a well-constructed metal mesh enclosure to eliminate interference, borrowing techniques like shaping mesh over a wooden template and insulating wires with ultra-thin enamel copper. While the final build does not quite reach the studio-quality level and looks of the referenced DIY Perks’ build, it is an impressive attempt to watch and learn from.
The project’s key challenge here would be achieving consistent audio quality. The microphone struggled with noise, low volume, and single-channel audio, until [Electronoobs] made smart modifications to the shielded wiring and amplification stages. Despite the hurdles, the build stands as an affordable alternative with significant potential for refinement in future iterations.
Neat looking project. Any test data to back up claims of quality to the $500 microphone? I could not find any.
I think the claim was based on ‘uses the same capsule’ and ignored the bit where engineers solve physics problems with build choices within the electronics. Using high quality components is great, but the open source board is still getting revved and there are some places where additional care would resolve issues minor enough to be background noise in the current process.
I’m pretty confident that there is a path to success available with an open source mic preamp, but I’m not confident this video or the diy perks one gets us closer to it.
Both rely on a prefabbed cheapo dac for usb conversion.
It seems staying analog a bit longer down the chain might help as well.
I would almost prefer to stay analog and pull a mic level out for that new sine taste,
then also have a preamp option to pull up to line level (tube?)
I have a hard time with their aliexpress dac selection as well. I suspect the 500 dollar mic didn’t steal a easycap dac. I think you could probably shape your digital artifact noise to an inaudible frequency and perhaps use a better dac than the easycap and maybe bump up to a higher sampling rate.
I don’t pretend to be good at designing audio equipment, but as far as I’m concerned analog signal work is up there with rf. It’s black magic to everyone except for the guys who have the intuition to read and adjust the instrumentation during the dev iterations. The rest of us are operating on rumors and traditions.
Now that I think of it, maybe I’m all wrong, and I should just go test my ideas on a workbench before I rain on the parade of these guys who have done it.
One should not confuse adc with dac when talking about quality devices… lol… can I blame it on autocorrect?
As he says, this is just copied from another project, which itself had numerous problems and room for improvement. In fact, he says he couldn’t even get that design working, so made changes, yet I couldn’t find any dox for them. Still a crap design. Good idea though. Boggles me how some expensive mics use cheapo capsules. One day I’ll create an actual good design…
Honestly I dont think that capsule is used in anything thats actually high end. In reality finding a large diaphragm clone made by behringer and upgrading the circuitry on that might get you the nicest affordable device, simply because they actively clone the diaphragms instead of using whatever is available on aliexpress.
I recommend people buy like a Nat King Bee and be done with it because peoples homes are not studios and the acoustic treatment for a condenser is more important than the mic itself
Concept is good, but he had a lot of unresolved noise problems in the end. I saw a few ‘noob issues in the build: at 6:00 the case pin of the FET was cut off, would have tied to the signal shield. at 8:50 noise was reduce with grill attached, but there is still noise on the scope. DC supply and audio grounds need special attention to keep any DC convertor current out of the audio signal, and probably the main source of the noise.
Putting that noisy USB board in the shielded case with the amplifier is not a great idea either.