a cuppla things:
- There are nice, clear textbook definitions for the terms "supercardioid" and "hypercardioid" but most manufacturers use them only as general indications. People are more familiar with the term "hypercardioid" so manufacturers tend to prefer it. Most microphones that claim to have either pattern actually fall somewhere between the two, often closer to supercardioid. I'm not sure that I even know of any actual hypercardioid microphone on the market today; if there is one, its pattern would resemble a lop-sided figure-8, with its rear lobe only 6 dB less sensitive than its main/front lobe rather than the more typical 10 or 11 dB.
- Very few microphones have the same pattern at all frequencies. The biggest single thing I wish everyone understood about microphones is this: When the pattern of a microphone differs at different frequencies, then correspondingly, that microphone's frequency response will differ from its "official" frequency response as a function of the angles at which sound arrives. There can't be one without the other. When manufacturers give the "pattern" of a microphone, they're usually describing its midrange behavior (1 kHz), but there are enormous differences among microphones as to how well the pattern is maintained across the frequency spectrum. That's a critical characteristic for live, on-location stereo recording with only two microphones.
Studios, on the other hand, don't usually use microphones in closely-spaced or coincident pairs. They don't care whether the type of microphone that they use for vocal soloists will work for X/Y or M/S or ORTF. People who do what we do should be wary about being influenced by the mike choices that studios make for solo voices or instruments. If you're going to look at the choices studio engineers make for their microphones, the place to look instead would be, what do they use for "room mikes" (= overall miking, which is sometimes used as the basis for a mix).
- People talk about LD vs. SD, and that's an important distinction, but single- vs. dual-diaphragm capsules is at least equally important. Nearly all large-diaphragm condensers have dual-diaphragm capsules--and as a result of this near-total overlap in categories, many people misidentify the characteristics that each of those two categories causes. Single-diaphragm capsules often have better pattern consistency across the audio spectrum (i.e. the quality that matters most, next to frequency response, for stereo pickup with two coincident or closely spaced microphones), while in the range of patterns we're talking about right now, dual-diaphragm microphones often have more bass. The thing is, you can add bass in post (or even in real time while recording), but you can't equalize away a bad polar pattern.
And actually I was too lenient in what I said two sentences ago: No large-diaphragm, dual-diaphragm capsule can ever (according to the laws of physics) have pattern consistency equal to that of a good small, single-diaphragm capsule. So if you're determined to use large-diaphragm microphones, you should understand that you're cutting yourself off from the technically superior choices for two-mike stereo location recording.
You may well get "more bass" from the dual-diaphragm mikes in this part of the pattern range; many small "hypercardioids" are designed primarily for dialog recording or other speech pickup (whether they're labeled that way or not), and have rolled-off low-frequency response. But with dual-diaphragm microphones the patterns "bloom" (spread out) at low frequencies, which will causes a closely-spaced or coincident pair of such microphones to pick up bass in nearly equal amounts and in phase. As a result the bass gets reproduced in mono or near-mono, greatly reducing the spaciousness of the recording. One really good thing about microphones that maintain a narrow directional pattern down to the lowest audio frequencies is that the bass that is picked up, even though it may be less loud, will be less "correlated" (similar in content and arrival time) between the stereo channels. You can boost that kind of bass in post or playback, and within reason, it won't sound boomy or artificial. Whereas if your bass pickup is ample but mono, there isn't much you can do to make that sound as good.
--best regards