Active mic cables

With mic preamp chips being so small and needing only a single resistor to set the gain, why not buid them into an XLR or inside the mic itself.
Royer now has an active ribbon mic. A higher signal level with very low noise would be much better to drive a tube preamp with its higher inherent noise.
Has anyone done this?
Steve

I made a small mic amp for use with my ribbon mics, giving 26dB of gain, and connected directly to the mic. I thought it was a neat idea, but it didn't really sound all that good. I'd rather make my tube preamps quiter and better. Oh, tubes don't have to be noisy :razz: I'm using Lundahl's L1577 1:14 & WE417As = no noise :!:

Also, you'd still need to power that chip inside the XLR. Anyway, putting stuff between the mic and the (tube) preamp just don't sound good to me. Heven't heard the Royer though.

Here's one for the geetar. Never tried it, but the idea is seems nice;

www.till.com/articles/GuitarPreamp/index.html