In March 2005, National Semiconductor announced
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hybrid amplifer / PCM encoder chips to enable manufacturers to create electret condenser microphones with digital output.
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The idea is that the only analog amplification and conversion to a digital signal occurs within the electret condenser microphone capsule itself. To me, it seems like "technology done right" to prevent interference by doing conversion to digital as close to the microphone as possible, and you can't get much closer than inside the capsule!
Has anyone seen or heard of an electret condenser mic capsule that incorporates this technology? I cannot locate one anywhere. The
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website that National references doesn't seem to work for me with Internet Explorer 7.It seems to me that with such a capsule, ultraminiature Linux computers such as picotux
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and power over ethernet, it would be possible to create a web server that streams output from a stereo microphone in a package scarcely larger than an RJ-45 ethernet jack! Surely I cannot be the first person to think of this....