What started out as half a joke turned into something pretty cool. Shortly after Mercenary started to work with Royer one of us was kidding around with one of their people that they should build a ribbon mic with a tube in it so Royer would have all the "buzzwords" in one place [this idea has come to fruition and is now called the R-122V, which is also a damn cool microphone!!]. Then we started to joke around about doing a ribbon mic with an internal amplifier [ribbon mics have notoriously low outputs which can often make the "self noise" kinda high] that ran on phantom power, see there is an old wives tale that says phantom power and ribbon mics don't mix... get the joke? Well it was funny when we were talking about it... work with me!! Thus was born the R-122. The guys at Royer did a superb job of building a very clear and very true output amplifier that is less susceptible to mic pre input transformer loading issues [which change the sound and response of the microphone]. The mic requires less gain from the pre-amp you've chosen as the mic has an internal amplifier [just like a FET condenser mic], which means less noise, increased detail to the audio and greater consistency of tone as you go from mic-pre to mic-pre. As with the R-121, the ribbon is offset in the capsule assembly so the ["non-logo side" [back] of the mic is a tad brighter than the logo side offering the user increased versatility.
royer R-122 features
Our Active Series ribbon microphones 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 ambiance. Our Active Series ribbon mics contain a fully balanced, discrete head amplifier system utilizing ultra-low noise FET’s. This system is extremely quiet, can handle SPL’s approaching 150 dB, and allows our Active ribbons to deliver a sensitivity of –38 dB! You can plug an Active Series microphone into preamplifiers with average gain characteristics and receive full Royer performance regardless of how quiet the sound source being recorded, and with enough gain to drive any recording medium.
The electronics in our Active Series ribbons impose the optimal load on the ribbon element at all times, meaning the microphones 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, the microphones can also be used on extremely long cable runs with minimal signal loss. A proper impedance match is critical with ribbon microphones because an impedance mis-match "loads" a ribbon improperly, resulting in loss of low end, diminished body, lowered sensitivity and overall compromised performance. With the new Active Series microphones, the ribbon element lives in a perfect world; it sees an optimum impedance match at all times regardless of what equipment follows, so its performance cannot be compromised by the effects of improper loading. In addition, the ribbon element cannot be damaged by phantom power, electrical glitches or mis-wired cables.
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