MIcrophone Design II Reading

1. Directional Response

Different microphones respond differently to sounds arriving from different directions. Some pick up sound equally well from all around. Some are designed to pick up sound approaching from one direction while others pick up sound from the front and rear but not the sides. Many modern studio microphones combine both pressure-operated (PO) and pressure-gradient (PG) transducer design to produce varying patterns of directivity between omni-directional and figure of eight.

Common polar patterns:

• Omni-directional (all around)
• Figure of eight (bi-directional) front and rear
• Cardioid (unidirectional) heart shaped
• Super cardioid
• Hyper cardioid

A given microphones polar pattern is defined by the particular transducer design implemented in its capsule. A polar pattern is a form of two-dimensional contour map showing the microphones output (usually in dB) at different angles of incident of a sound wave. The greater the plot from the center the greater the output of the microphone at that angle.