Choosing a Polar Pattern (Part 1)

  Now that I covered different microphones and their basic elements in my last blogs the only other thing to understand when using a microphone is their pickup patterns. A pickup pattern, also called polar patterns, is the direction that the diaphragm (see Microphone ‘Magic’ for an explanation) inside the microphone is focused on. It is in these pickup patterns that the diaphragm picks up vibrations from sound. In general, there are three categories for pickup patterns: unidirectional (cardioid), bidirectinal (figure-8), and omnidirectional (boundary) configurations.

  The unidirectional pattern is the most popular pickup pattern for microphones. As you can guess by the beginning of the term, ‘uni’-consisting of one, the configuration of a unidirectional pickup pattern is focused on one direction- the front of the microphone. This pattern is also referred to as the cardioid pattern, because as you can see in the diagram, the pattern looks like a heart.

  With sound vibrations being isolated to only one area, the unidirectional pickup pattern is great for live sound engineering when you want to control the source of an input. The microphone will block out any ambient noise, like from a guitar close to a singer, and focus on just the vocals coming from the singer.




*Check out Part 2 for info on bidirectinal (figure-8), and omnidirectional (boundary) configurations.