eli5 What does microphone impedance mean, what does it affect and do I need to care about it with a PC USB mic?
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A microphone is essentially a speaker working in reverse. Instead of an electrical signal interacting with a magnet to make a speaker cone move and push air to create sound waves, the sound waves push the mic diaphragm which interacts with a magnet to make an electrical signal.
The impedance refers to how much that electrical signal is resisted, which means it refers to the strength of the signal. As other people have mentioned that strength needs to be matched to what an amplifier expects to work with, otherwise it will amplify far too much or far too little.
That’s all applicable to the analog electrical domain. But USB is a digital connection. So by the time the audio information reaches your computer’s USB port it has already been converted to ones and zeroes and the impedance value is irrelevant and inapplicable.
So no, you don’t need to care about the impedance value. It’s just marketing wankers trying to make you associate irrelevant numbers with your perception of the product’s quality and value.
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