ENGLISH
Polar characteristics:
Microphones have one or more directional characteristics to achieve better results in recording
sound, depending on the application. Sound arriving at the basket and capsule from certain
angles can be cancelled, attenuated or not affected at all. How strong or weak these effects are
depends on the microphone. The main characteristics include omnidirectional, figure-of-eight and
club, while the cardioid, wide cardioid, supercardioid and hypercardioid characteristics are a
mixed form.
Example application 1: Ball
Since the omnidirectional characteristic has no cancellations due to the design of the microphone,
sound from all directions can be picked up almost equally.
Example application 2: Kidney
Sound hitting the rear of the cardioid is cancelled/attenuated in the cardioid characteristic. The
focus here is on the direct signal.
Example Application 3: Eight
The figure of eight is suitable for duet recordings in which the singer/speaker are facing each
other. Side-impacting sound is attenuated/eliminated so that only direct sound is recorded.
