What Are Microphone Polar Patterns?

The polar pattern of a microphone describes the area around the mic that it can hear or “pick up” sound waves. In a perfect world, if you had a tuned soundproof room, you would only need one omnidirectional microphone to record most of your tracks. Since most of us don’t work in such an environment, we need to contend with imperfect acoustics, background noises, and crosstalk from multiple sound sources (think drum kit).

Live sound presents a much more complex situation for sound reinforcement, monitoring, and recording, which brings the need for many types of polar patterns. Think of it more as controlling what the mic is not listening to while capturing the parts you want. With that in mind, let’s look at how different polar patterns work and when to use them.

Now that we know a little more about the basic polar patterns, let’s look at how they interact with each other when used in combinations. Sound waves travel in time, and the point in time can be referred to as the phase. If you placed two omnidirectional microphones aimed towards each other in a “V” formation (45 degrees) the area where the patterns overlap will be “phase canceled” this creates a nice stereo separation for overhead drums, piano or any stereo source.

Microphones are basically musical paint brushes; there’s no rule against thinking outside the box and using dissimilar patterns together. Try using a figure eight placed sideways with an omni in the middle aimed at the 12th fret of an acoustic guitar.

A popular choice for stereo room mic’ing is the “Blumlein technique.” Place one figure eight mic upside down over another with the axis rotated 90 degrees. Now make sure the pair is 45 degrees off axis of the sound source. The four resulting patterns will capture the sound stage and the source in beautiful three-dimensional detail.

With all the subtle and not-so-subtle effects that microphone polar patterns can have on a recorded track, wouldn’t be nice to be able to choose which polar pattern to use after you made the take?

Using digital technology, several manufacturers offer microphones that use modelling algorithms to simulate any polar pattern after recording the track. Again with the paint brush theme, this allows the user to totally trample the rules of what goes where and try out some truly outrageous combinations while keeping a “safe” copy of the original recorded performance. These were originally focused on recording applications, but live applications are now available, and the field is growing.

Microphone polar patterns can make a huge difference in your recording or live sound application, and it’s important to get the right one for your desired sound. And if you fall into one of these three “Buy-Polar” Purchasing Patterns, here’s some quick advice:

• “I’m waiting for the price to go down” Don’t: It’s probably going to go up.
• “I’m waiting for cooler version” Don’t: There probably someday will be, but you could wait forever instead of making music now. Abbey Road was recorded on a 4-track in1970.
• “I don’t have that kind of money” Don’t: Use our easy payment plans spread out payments with 0% interest!

If you still have questions about which microphone polar pattern would work best for your needs, our team is standing by to help you find the all the solutions for your musical life. Whether you’re burning the midnight oil in your studio, strumming on your sofa or packing the subwoofers back out to the van, we have answers. Our Gear Acquisition Specialist hotline is 800-458-4075.