Making and Testing a Homemade Parabolic Mic 

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I 100% support lighting more stuff on fire for no reason.

*Tapes broken paint roller to umbrella hat* "Does that look right to you?"

"I got the fake turd instead ... 'CAUSE I'M A MODERN ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOGUE!!!"

I actually thought that paint roller was a microphone for a good 5 seconds.

Modern Rogue: this is just a random idea, but if you really want to make a parabolic mic, maybe try getting an old satellite dish from a junkyard? i mean, those are properly calibrated to accurately pick up a TV signal. Stands to reason it would work for analogue signals as well as digital.

"We're like, the MacGyver of Garbage" Sooooo, just MacGyver then.

Fun experiment! It looks like your boom may be too long. If you trace a ray coming in from the front parallel to the boom but offset to the side a bit, it looks like it would hit about halfway (or less) up your boom rod. One way to determine the focal point might be to put a few pieces of reflective tape at various points and shoot a laser straight in from a distance: see where the point lands. Also, the umbrella is not parabolic which means you won't have a single focal point and that can actually cause sound cancellation when some of the sound hits the mic out of phase.

"Gaff tape does everything" As the person who works in Theatre, that is a fact. It's better than Duct-tape.

Congrats on 300k guys. You're my favorite pair to watch!

that hat is probably one of the most useful inventions i would never use

They've got parabolic mics (kind of) at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle! At one of the entrances, there are two parabolic reflector things about 50 feet apart. If one person whispers into one disk and one person listens to the other, you can still totally make out what they say! I know I'm about a half a year late for this video but I'm going through the whole playlist now :^) Gotta rep Seattle when I can, lol

I love you, Brandt. Thanks for having the "uhh where's the sledgehammer" part in. I died.

6:03 sums up the internet pretty well

Macgyver-ing is the theme of this show apparently

Hey Modern Rogue! Just a hint: The microphone that you use matter. You must aim for a high sensitivity directional mic. It might worth a shot to create a simple high gain low noise amplifier for this task probably with some filtering. Search for super ear circuit. It is very interesting and not that complicated as it sound.

"cut a tiny hole" "ok" *stabs right through*

next make x-ray glasses

Yooooo 300k!!!! Congrats on the milestone guys. Love the show

You guys are the greatest. Your content is so unique and refreshing and the nerdy banter and jokes between you two really brings everything together. Lets get modern rogue to a million subs!

It's crazy how naturally your dialogue flows, and how you're amazing each other with new ideas and stories the other person has never heard. A lot of that spontaneity would probably be lost if you researched and prepared these videos together.

Been on a binge watch Modern Rogue marathon. You guys are like the spiritual sequel to the MythBusters to me.

My grandparents live in a canyon type place and they can hear people having a conversation that are maybe about a mile away from their front porch... kinda creepy😂

This is one of my favorite channels, they cover everything from alcohol and fighting techniques to homemade body armor!

How do you guys have insurance to do this when Brian is just freely setting fire to whatever he wants?

make a metal foundry/forge and make the gentleman's weapons yourselves

If you get a junked old satellite dish, you've got all you need.

2:38 in a place where i worked at (it was a science place) we gad an ecosphere and it was made from triangles in such a way that the sound was directed from one side of the room to the other, it was so cool, you could hear someone whispering from a far

Congrats on 300,000 subscribers, Brian and Jason

Maybe the microphone was just too far away from the umbrella parabola

Great video ! Btw big fan since the first episodes of scam school

You guys are so amazing! I can't get enough of Scam School and Modern Rogue!!

300k! Congrats guys

I'm so early there isn't even the giveaway on the comment section!

I would recommend that you put a cap on the opposite end of the lav, it will cut out the extra noise coming from the side from the AC

WOO 300K SUB HYPE Congrats! :D

this concept actually works really well, when i was in broadcasting school we had to film football games, and in order to get the nice crunch sound effect on the audio is that there is someone running around with a parabola mic, and because they are expensive in order to mimic that we had a person with a big wok with a lappel wireless mic held up by straws and gaffer tape, and by gosh golly if that didnt work.

I haven't finished watching the video yet but I would've made the microphone adjustable so that as I'm recording I can adjust the microphone up and down and find the exact focus.

#GRILLEDCHEEEEEESE

It's interesting how you basically found out what to use the parabolic microphone for. It narrows the field of sound while slightly amplifying whatever's directly in front of it. It doesn't amplify things as its main purpose, but rather collects more of the sound than the microphone could without the parabola, while cutting out interference from competing sources. This makes it excellent for long distance listening. For a better illustration, you should have tested it outdoors, eliminating wall echo and room reverb, as well as using a unidirectional microphone. Very interesting showcase of exploring use case by testing and modifying as an iterative process.

If you stand at the back of an empty cargo bay of a cargo 747-400 aircraft, it does the same exact thing if people are talking up towards the upper deck boarding stairs. Very clear and very audible

Anyone else just want those golden playing cards?

Congrats on 300K!

there's a museum like 2 hours away from where I live (by car) that has these enormous parabolic mic things, like 40 to 50 feet tall or so, placed like 200 feet apart or something, and you can whisper into one and the person at the other one can hear you. It was the coolest thing to me when I first tried it, and it's still really awesome for how simple it is.

will there be a hacking the system season 2? :'( but this series is cool too. Grats on 300k subs

Why didn't they calculate the height of the focal point themselves? It isn't hard to calculate the focal point of a parabola.

I listened to other tests doing the same thing and it does make a major difference when you use better equipment. The parabolic listening devices are actually very good if you have a proper reflective surface. Some radars use that same design and work very good (actually excellently) and often outperform other types of radars. That is why you will see parabolic antennas for deep space listening and for over the line of sight radars.

This would have worked perfectly! With the deeper shape of your specific parabola, your acoustical focal point was almost even with the parabola's rim. All of your sound waves were being reflected between the mic and the parabola. Your microphone location would have worked for a parabolic reflector whose parabolic curve was more shallow. Still very cool, and I really liked the scaling idea. Plus, 1 in 10 views commented, including me! That's amazing! Thanks for the content, keep it up!

Cong on 300 k

What if you use a 5 gallon bucket?

Brian! Easy way to determine the focal point for something like that is to get two dowel rods, set one up so its running through the center (like the post you mounted the mic to) set the other so it forms a 90 degree angle with the edge of the reflecting surface (the umbrella in this case), join the two dowels to one another at the intersecting point using say, a nut and bolt, and you should be able to verify if this is your best average focal point by using the compass you just built to check the distance of the angled reflecting surface is within a good margin of error. Also, consider using a sphere and cutting it in half, as its focal point will always be the exact center point on the same plane that you make your cut on. Or even better, one of those nearly half-sphere mixing bowls? if you can get one made of metal all the better.

congrats on 300k!!

Someone need to take all the stupid thinks they say and add 'CAUSE I'M A MODERN ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOGUE!!!" .this deserves to be its own meme.

The Modern Rogue Rules

I've been to the White House and it is considered a whisper gallery because of the arced ceiling. The ceiling causes the acoustics to travel to certain points based on the curvature of the ceiling. It was very unique.

I have no knowledge whatsoever about the physics of sound. but I did buy my son a parabolic mic for Christmas. the cone was deeper than it was round. I think that narrowed the area of receipt and allows for a more focused listen. we were able to listen to Whispers from across our house. wind chimes from about maybe a hundred and fifty feet. I'm guessing that maybe because your cone was so wide you might've heard much more focused sounds at a longer distance though it would have been quieter. I'm not going to lie I like to play with parabolic mic concept some more. it fits my son's love of spy gear and kind of tickles my modern Rogue appeal

soo would it be socially acceptable if i got stopped by the police because i was burning then smashing things in the street and my only excuse is me yelling "The Internet!!!"

The modern rogue burning down studios since 2016

Every summer I work at an amphitheater that has a bowl over the stage, just like the hollywood bowl... we, the crew, know that we can walk along that bowl and listen to individual conversations in the audience... but also, it works both ways, we can have conversations across the entire venue just by standing in the right place.

lol i get so god damn excited every time i see you guys upload a new video!!!!!

Rip aricibo observatory

Inconspicuous spy gadgets...

The main thing about directional microphones is that they *don't* make far away sounds louder. Instead, they cancel out or significantly lower the level of unwanted sounds off-axis from where you are pointing the mic. For example, if you had a omnidirectional microphone a set distance away from a sound source in a busy park, you might be able to hear the sound source, but it would be masked by all of the ambient noise around it. Now replace the omnidirectional mic with a shotgun mic (or "interference tube microphone"), at the same set distance, using the same gain settings as before. You will be able to hear the sound source much clearer, as the off-axis sound has been significantly lowered, however the actual level of the sound source remains the same. Parabolic microphones work in the same way. They leverage a parabolic dish's property of focusing reflections off of the dish to a focal point, so only sounds that are going directly into the dish will hit the microphone. You'll still need to use some sort of directional microphone, as you could still pick up noise off-axis that hits the microphone directly, instead of bouncing off of the dish. However, Parabolic microphones are typically relegated to specific use cases, as the dish tends to only reflect a narrow band of frequencies. The sound you get out of a professional parabolic microphone will typically have the sound quality similar to a land line telephone. -kruvek from chatrealm

5:57 ahhh now THIS is quality inernet content THIS IS WHY WERE HERE !!

the problem for sure is in the angle, since every point wont bounce to the exact place where microfone is

I want those cards... but I cant find them on Scamstuff. :(

Love these longer episodes :)

The whisper dish was one of my memories as a child. I think it was in "Sesame Place" in PA. It was two concave dishes that you could speak at a normal volume at the focal points and people between couldn't hear you. It was definitely mathematically calibrated so that both speakers were in the focal point.

Really weird illusion at 2:20 (focus on the umbrella for about 10 seconds)

if i go 3 units out shouldn't it be 1/9th as loud and not 1/16th?

Lmaooo that shot when you cut the first tiny whole in the umbrella!! So, cut one tiny hole right there near the center. *Stab* *Structure gives out* Okay...

congrats on 300 000+ subscribers

kipkay made one from a megaphone. i dont like kipkay

Kinda sad watching this now in late 2020 and hearing them bring up Aricebo, rip radio space telescope

I loved the Johnson Smith catalog, especially around Halloween

This channel is one of the best on RU-vid. I really hope they get to 1mil soon

The hat is not a true parabola. Do the math and make one out of cardboard and aluminum foil.

that acetone + sledgehammer part was more cringey than brians previous haircut lol

I'm loving the lo-fi on the background

Chichen Itza is an amazing thing to see. I was fortunate enough to see them play them a Maya Ballgame at Chichen Itza before they stopped doing that. It is amazing.

anyone else got grilled cheese song stuck in their head now . ?

Last time I was this early, the earlybirds were angry at me for waking them up.

you guys are like mythbusters how do you not have more subs

How do I get my friends to realize how awesome this channel is and get them to subscribe without using physical coercion O,O

no it is not parabola

2nd!

This is what a classing MR episode is. Bring them back!

Couple of suggestions: 1. Tin foil instead of cards. 2. Attach the mic to an adjustable antennae so you can easily dial in the focal point. I would be willing to bet your results would improve significantly.

Try it outside, I think what may have lessened the effect of the parabolic mic. was the sound waves bouncing off walls, thus providing great sound quality regardless.

Literally have those cards! 🤣 I'm halfway there!!!

that parabolic mic is trippy as hell. its like one of those weird optical illusions

OMG, I remember 3, 2, 1, CONTACT! I had a subscription to the magazine, too!

Love you guys man. I'm a new subber but you guys make my night this should be on tv 💯♥️

Just Brian's justification for setting the paint roller on fire, "The Internet!!"

321 contact! one of my favorite 90's shows.

3:36 "I got this on amazon." Jason Murphy's catchphrase for MR.

The whole "he's talking about the mic, not the hat" was very useful

KEKWWW YALL GOT THE DELI FOR MUSIC HELL YA

Nice to know I wasn't the only kid that loved to watch 3-2-1 Contact!

If you're like me and do everything ad nauseum then here's something that'll make this a little easier. Setup a parabolic function on a poster board you measured out like f(x)=(1/8)(x^2) then measure out some dots to base your graph on, then put a lot of x values into the function and do it on your calculator, mark dots at every on of the values of he function, once this is one you now have a template of a parabola and use that template as a guide to bend some steel wire into that shape; do this multiple times until you have a large amount of these steel wires. Now, a little bit of calculus. The focal point will be at the point along the y axis between the point of the slopes being 1 and -1; this is found by finding the derivative function of the one which ends up being f '(x)= (1/4)(x^2). The value of f '(x) is equal to the slope at that x value so the algebra ends up being: f '(x)= (1/4)(x^2) f '(x)=1 1= (1/4)(x^2) 4=x^2 x=2 What this means is that you're going to measure two of the units on your poster board out, then go straight up. Do this to the other side and then do it to the rest of them, the exact midpoint between your two marked lines will be the focal point. Array of your steel wires in a circular formation so it looks like a cone and then cover the inside with some aluminum plates (just go to home depot). Align your speaker's receiving end with the focal point and there you go. A parabolic mic, and replace the plates with reflective mylar and there you have a parabolic mirror capable of burning stuff.