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What a polar pattern really is
A microphone’s polar pattern is a map of how sensitive it is to sound arriving from each direction. The map is drawn as a closed curve around the microphone: the further the curve reaches in a direction, the louder sound from that direction appears. The explorer above draws that map live for six common patterns, and lets you drag the angle to read the exact response and level at any direction. A cardioid curve looks like a heart, wide at the front and pinched to a point at the rear, which is exactly how it behaves: it hears the front well, the sides at half strength, and almost nothing from directly behind.
The patterns exist because microphones reject sound in different ways, and that rejection is a tool. Recording a singer in a noisy room? A cardioid pointed at the singer rejects the computer fan behind it. Recording two singers facing each other with one microphone? A figure-8 hears both fronts and rejects the sides, which is where the room noise and the piano often sit. Recording a whole choir or a room’s natural sound? An omnidirectional microphone hears everything equally and captures the space honestly, at the cost of hearing the noisy street outside too. There is no best pattern, only the pattern whose rejections land on your problems.
How to use the explorer
- Pick a pattern from the list: omnidirectional, cardioid, supercardioid, hypercardioid, figure-8, or shotgun.
- Drag the angle slider from 0 degrees, directly in front, around to 360 degrees.
- Watch the red dot move around the curve and read the response and level at that angle.
- Compare patterns at the same angle, especially at 90 degrees (the side) and 180 degrees (the rear), where they differ most.
Reading the numbers
Response is a number from 0 to 1, where 1 means full sensitivity. Level in decibels is the same fact in logarithmic form: a response of 0.5 is minus 6 decibels, which is why a cardioid’s side response of 0.5 is often described as 6 decibels down. Rear rejection is the level at 180 degrees, and it is the headline number for most buyers: a cardioid’s theoretical rear rejection is infinite, shown here capped at minus 60 decibels, because a response of exactly zero cannot be expressed in decibels. Real cardioid microphones manage 20 to 30 decibels of rear rejection in practice, and that gap between theory and product is normal: the published curves are idealised, and real capsules, mounts and rooms all soften them.
Supercardioid and hypercardioid are worth a careful look, because they surprise people. Both reject the sides more strongly than a cardioid, which makes them popular on loud stages, but both have a small rear lobe: they hear a little sound from directly behind, unlike a cardioid which hears almost none. A singer who cups a hypercardioid microphone or a monitor wedge placed directly behind it can therefore feed back more easily than the pattern’s name suggests. The explorer shows this lobe clearly, and it is the single most useful thing to learn from the tool before buying a stage microphone.
The patterns in practice
- Omnidirectional: no proximity effect, no rejection, honest room sound. Best for quiet rooms, choirs, and measurement.
- Cardioid: the all-rounder. Good rear rejection, moderate side rejection, forgiving placement. Best for home studios and podcasting.
- Supercardioid and hypercardioid: tighter front pickup, stronger side rejection, small rear lobe. Best for loud stages with careful monitor placement.
- Figure-8: equal front and rear, deep side nulls. Best for duets, mid-side stereo recording, and rejecting a noise source at 90 degrees.
- Shotgun: very narrow front pickup through interference, used on film sets to reach across a room. Poor indoors, where reflections defeat the interference effect.
Common mistakes
The most common mistake is pointing the wrong end of the microphone at the source: side-address studio microphones hear from the side of the body, not the top, and a cardioid pointed backwards records the room instead of the singer. The second mistake is trusting the pattern at all frequencies: real patterns widen at low frequencies and narrow at high ones, so a cardioid that rejects well at 1,000 Hz may barely reject at 100 Hz. The third is forgetting proximity effect: directional microphones boost bass as the source gets closer, which is flattering for a thin voice and muddy for one that is already warm.
Use the explorer to build intuition, then verify with your ears: record the same voice from the front, side and rear of your microphone, and compare the levels with the curves. When the map and your ears agree, you will place microphones with confidence instead of guessing, and your recordings will get cleaner without buying anything new.
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