Polar Diagram Microphone. How the physical body of the microphone is oriented relative to the diagrams depends on the microphone design. 0 is the front of the microphone and the angle where the microphone has its maximum sensitivity.
Most shotgun microphones have lobar pattern especially those longer shotguns and yet this pattern can vary greatly. A microphone s polar pattern is an important consideration when it comes to figuring out if a microphone is the right or wrong tool for a particular situation. How to read a polar pattern diagram think of a 360 field surrounding the microphone.
The term polar pattern describes how a microphone picks up sound.
Technically they can also be labeled as a number of things including supercardioid and hypercardioid but in the end what matters is the mic s individual polar diagram. For large membrane microphones such as in the oktava pictured above the upward direction in the polar diagram is usually perpendicular to the microphone body commonly known as side fire or side address. Here s a diagram showing how they look. A polar pattern graph shows the variation in sensitivity as you move 360 degrees around the microphone.
