Microphone array

Given a fixed physical relationship in space between the different individual microphone transducer array elements, simultaneous DSP (digital signal processor) processing of the signals from each of the individual microphone array elements can create one or more "virtual" microphones.

The application of these algorithms can produce varying levels of accuracy when calculating source level and location, and as such, care should be taken when deciding how the individual lobes of the virtual microphones are derived.

[3] In case the array consists of omnidirectional microphones they accept sound from all directions, so electrical signals of the microphones contain the information about the sounds coming from all directions.

[4] An array of 1020 microphones,[5] the largest in the world until August 21, 2014, was built by researchers at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Currently the largest microphone array in the world was constructed by DLR, the German Aerospace Center, in 2024.