Topic: New Android/iOS app to visualize polar patterns.

[achalsey]

http://www.aratechlabs.com/using-microphone-polar-patterns-software

Anyone tried this out?  Looks pretty interesting.  If for nothing else as just a basic catalogue of mic information. 

Looks like the app only covers "AEA, Audio-Technica, Audix, Beyerdynamic, Electro-Voice, Lewitt, Mojave Audio, Oktava, Royer Labs, Schoeps, Telefunken-Elektroakustik and Violet Design" mics at the moment.  Apparently more will be added with further updates.

[John Willett]

Looks interesting - but far too few microphones at the moment.

It seems biased mainly on the cheaper end of the market - very few Schoeps, no Sennheiser MKH series, very few Neumann, only a couple of Gefell.

Not much use until they get a lot more microphones in there.

I have lots of microphones and not one of them is in the list yet. 

[flipp]

I noticed a Senn, a couple Schoeps and 4 Neumanns will be added to the database in the next release/update but most things in the mic list seem to favor studio applications and not field work.

[Gutbucket]

Not sure what the advantage of this is, other than it looks cool.. and the camera image overlay tech is interesting in itself.

Maybe for aligning unwanted sound sources more accurately with pattern nulls, if it's actually accurate enough to do that and you can't monitor while adjusting mic orientation to do that.  But other than that what good is this for setting up mics for recording?  We already know the general patterns of our mics, and their more specific variances from their polars.  If it's just a way to see their 3rd party polar measurements, why would I need to view that in real time with an app?

[voltronic]

Agreed - I don't think this is any more useful than reading polar plots on manufacturers' spec pages.  Other than that, it looks pretty cool I guess.

I wish the developers of this app would make an Android version:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stereo-mic-tools/id572383335?mt=8

Until then, I use a combination of these to accomplish the same thing:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.neumann.recordingtools&hl=en
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appyhand.bearingcompass
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pineapple4.protractor

[achalsey]

If they do keep adding mics to the "miclibrary" and have accurate info of the frequency responses it seems like that alone would be a pretty neat resource to have on hand immediately.  You can presumably (or should be able to at least) look up all the polar plots and response graphs for mics from the manufacturer's websites, but having a large library of mic information just in an app seems pretty cool to me. (as in the right hand picture at the top of the page linked)  Even better if they added in some sort of comparison feature to look at two, or more, separate response graphs at once.

The visual representation is possibly a little 'gimmicky' as one should probably already have an idea of the polar pattern he or she is using, but still looks pretty nifty....well, If it works....which I would imagine is not as pretty as the demonstration.

[Fried Chicken Boy]

Not exactly cheap either: $30 USD for the Android version. 

[Gutbucket]

I wish the developers of this app would make an Android version:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stereo-mic-tools/id572383335?mt=8

The developer is a member Miq here.  Worked it up originally a few pages into this mic visualization thread- http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=148194.msg1896571#msg1896571

[John Willett]

Agreed - I don't think this is any more useful than reading polar plots on manufacturers' spec pages.  Other than that, it looks pretty cool I guess.

I wish the developers of this app would make an Android version:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/stereo-mic-tools/id572383335?mt=8

That app - Stereo Mic Tools - is excellent.  I have an iPhone, so am not worried there is no Android version, but it would make a lot of people happy if there was.

Though I do like these stereo mic clips available via SHAPEWAYS - 3D printed stereo mic clips, each designed for a particular mic.

They are so designed that you just line up the back ov the mic with the back of the clip and you have the perfect angle and capsule spacing.

I got the ORTF one formy pair of Gefell M300s - it makes it all *so* very easy and very fast - and you don't need these visualisations as the set-up is perfect.