[Sherwood]

The title could also read "Why do most microphone companies also make headphones?" depending on the forum, but it's the same question. Off the top of my head, AKG, Shure, Sony, Sennheiser, Beyerdynamic, and Audio Technica all make well known headphones and microphones. Grado doesn't make microphones, but they do make cartridges and that's close enough for me.

With that in mind, I want a few companies that only make one or the other to branch out. Most notably, I'd like to sing into an Ultrasone mic, and I would kill to listen to a pair of Neumann headphones. Any other ideas?

 

[Publius]

Dynamic headphones and dynamic microphones are, fundamentally, the same thing. It's just transduction in one direction or the other. (It is entirely possible to use a headphone as a microphone; whether it's a good idea is another story entirely.) The same, more generally, applies for cartridges, speakers, and any other electromagnetic transduction device.

So expertise applied to one field can often be applied to other similar fields.

IEM manufacturers lack this expertise because they don't make their drivers. Knowles does. So it is extremely unlikely that Ultrasone would ever design a microphone in-house.

 

[themick]

Ultrasone doesn't make iems. Never have...never will. Though I'm not sure how s-Logic would apply to a microphone

 

[Sherwood]

Quote:

Originally Posted by themick /img/forum/go_quote.gif Ultrasone doesn't make iems. Never have...never will. Though I'm not sure how s-Logic would apply to a microphone

It would apply awesomely is how.

 

[Jeff Guidry]

I would guess that it's also partially due to the recording studio. To best monitor the input from your AKG microphone, an AKG headphone might be a good choice, or whatever..............

 

[Thelonious Monk]

i don't get how phono carts are anything close to microphones... lol

 

[Lazarus Short]

I could be way off, but I seem to have read that some headphone manufacturers got their start by using their own microphone transducers in a new way. I don't think Stax was one of them.

Laz