A microphone array is a set of multiple microphones operating in tandem. This is shown to have many applications:

• Systems for extracting voice input from ambient noise (notably telephones, speech recognition systems, hearing aids)
• Surround sound and related technologies
• Locating objects by sound: acoustic source localization
• High fidelity original recordings

Typically, an array is made up of omnidirectional microphones distributed about the perimeter of a space, linked to a computer that records and interprets the results into a coherent form.

There are some implementation of microphones arrays that are really big. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an array of 1020 microphones ^* has been built.

Microphones

Mikrofonarray | Microfoonarray