Ears

Mutable Instruments' contact microphone, in 4 HP: the panel itself is the microphone, its ridges made to be scratched, tapped or rubbed, with an envelope follower and a gate detector.

Key features

• A contact microphone soldered under the panel: the whole case becomes a microphone
• Ridges spaced further and further apart, for pulses and combs of impulses when rubbed: to strike or scratch resonators like Rings or Elements
• Gain from 0 to 40 dB, with a high-impedance input for an external contact microphone, a guitar or a line-level source
• Envelope follower (ENV) and gate detector (GATE, +8 V), with jumpers at the back for their speed and threshold
• Three lamps: clipping (red), envelope level (white), gate (orange)
• All analog; made from September 2016 to March 2022; the design is open source