Topic: Which brand/model hypers are the most 'directional'?

[su6oxone]

Out of the major high-end brands that make hyper/supercardioids, primarily Schoeps, AKG, Gefell, and Neumann, any thoughts on which tend to be the most directional?  That is, which tend to isolate the music (and cut down the crowd noise) the best? 

[yug du nord]

As far as I know, super-cards are more directional than hyper-cards.......  and not all manufacturers offer supers.........  so that slims down the possibilities a bit.

[page]

As far as I know, super-cards are more directional than hyper-cards.......  and not all manufacturers offer supers.........  so that slims down the possibilities a bit.

and not all hyper cardioids are created equally which doesn't help. A manufacturer make label the pattern as A, but it may deviate from that a lot, a little, or none. 

[OOK]

Of all the hypers I have heard....I like the Gefells the best(nice and full sounding with good rejection from sides and rear).......next MBHO(I find myself going to these the most since I own a set I have always loved the MBHO sound)...... then AKG( nice sounding with good rejection and the have that sizzle)....Schoeps(My ears don't like the sound of these.  The sound blotted to me...?I know others love them.) and lastly Neumann( Thin sounding to me, but they have good rejection from sides and rear)........   As always these are just opinions and everyone has them..... but if I could own another set it would be the gefells....and at some point I just might......right now its just out of the question....   OOK

[Brian Skalinder]

I think to find an answer you'll have to review the polar pattern diagrams for each brand/model of mic of interest.  And it may not be cut and dry, e.g. at some frequencies certain mics may be more directional than others, but be less directional than others at different frequencies.

[su6oxone]

Thanks for the input everyone.  I did forget the MBHOs somehow. 

I guess the reason I'm asking is that I've found my CCM4 and CCM41s to not sound a whole lot different (topic of a future thread with comps) in similar situations, with prominent crowd noise pickup with the CCM41s, and so I've been a bit disappointed by them.  Although as supercardioids, DSatz has pointed out previously that they may be closer to cardioids than true hypers.  I'm not going to get rid of them but I was curious if other hypers were known to be more 'hyper' than the rest. 

[it-goes-to-eleven]

Hypers help with crowd noise, but they aren't magic.  Nearby clappers, whistlers, and yellers; they will all still be a problem with hypers.  If they're distant, hypers will help.  Don't forget about  the rear lobe on the hypers.

The key with hypers is to go with the best hypers.  Most stink, imho, and aren't worth bothering with.  I own MG210's and have simultaneously owned mk41's.   A more directional mic is pointless if it sounds like ass.  And for what we do, most hypers sound poor.   I prefer to run close, so I almost never run hypers.  Though great hypers sound fine stage lip.

An alternative to hypers is to get closer, so the source is louder. 

Another consideration... If you are spot micing with the hyper, you are able to fully reap the benefits of the directional pattern.  However, if you are running a config like DINA, the combined pattern coverage is going to compromise your off-axis rejection.

[Todd R]

However, if you are running a config like DINA, the combined pattern coverage is going to compromise your off-axis rejection.

Agree with all you're saying, but one more thing to consider is you can run hypers in a narrower pattern (maybe 75 degrees or so, rather than DIN/DINa 90) and reduce the amount of room reflections/reverb/boominess while still maintaining the same stereo recording angle.  You'd have to consider your actual hyper polar pattern and consult the stereophonic zoom literature, but that's the basic idea.  I find when I need to be farther back, that's what I lean towards -- reduce the included angle on the hypers to reduce the room effect and still try to maintain stereo separation.

As to which hyper is most directional, I don't know.  I will second that the Gefell m210 is the favorite hyper I've owned, by far (have owned AKG 393, 463, 483, MBHO hypers, Neumann km150, and a bunch of cheaper hypers).

[page]

Thanks for the input everyone.  I did forget the MBHOs somehow. 

and beyerdynamic (mc/ck 950)

I think to find an answer you'll have to review the polar pattern diagrams for each brand/model of mic of interest.  And it may not be cut and dry, e.g. at some frequencies certain mics may be more directional than others, but be less directional than others at different frequencies.

I thought about this with the schoeps. My 930s have a higher HF presence off axis then they do on-axis, would that be considered a tighter off axis pattern? So I guess you could say "X has a tigher pattern then Y or Z at frequency Q", or do a quick and dirty average to get your result across frequencies.

[Gutbucket]

However, if you are running a config like DINA, the combined pattern coverage is going to compromise your off-axis rejection.

Agree with all you're saying, but one more thing to consider is you can run hypers in a narrower pattern (maybe 75 degrees or so, rather than DIN/DINa 90) and reduce the amount of room reflections/reverb/boominess while still maintaining the same stereo recording angle.  You'd have to consider your actual hyper polar pattern and consult the stereophonic zoom literature, but that's the basic idea.  I find when I need to be farther back, that's what I lean towards -- reduce the included angle on the hypers to reduce the room effect and still try to maintain stereo separation.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is important to understand.  More spacing and less angle between mics narrows the combined pattern (effectively increasing the direct/reverberant ratio, and reducing the off-axis room and crowd contribution) yet can maintain a similar stereo recording angle.

BTW, I just posted in the 4081 DPA miniature supercardioid a few minutes ago.  It's a somewhat different animal and as yet an unkown mic for us, but another to consider (keeping its low end response and miniature size in mind).

[DSatz]

Hi. Two concepts are getting confused here. Narrowness of front pickup pattern is one thing; effectiveness at suppressing random-incidence sound is a different thing. You can maximize one or the other in the design of a directional microphone, but not both at the same time. This is because all the patterns that are "beyond cardioid" have a rear lobe that's in opposite polarity to the front lobe.

In the figure-8, which is the extreme case, that rear lobe is equal and opposite to the front lobe. The front lobe of a figure-8 is the narrowest possible first-order pickup pattern--but it's obviously not the solution to the problem that the original poster was asking about. Because that rear lobe is equally sensitive to the front lobe, on the whole a figure-8 is no better at rejecting random-incidence sound than a cardioid would be. That alone proves that those two things aren't the same.

The hypercardioid pattern has a distinctly narrower front lobe than the supercardioid pattern, yet the supercardioid is more effective than the hypercardioid at excluding random-incidence sound in relation to its sensitivity to sound arriving from the front of the microphone.

In practice, nearly all microphones that are called either pattern by their manufacturers are in fact somewhere in between anyway. I know of very few actual hypercardioids, or even in-between cases that are any closer to hypercardioid than to supercardioid, or even that split the difference 50/50. Instead, most are closer to supercardioid--because customers generally tend to prefer that particular compromise. I'm not just talking about any one company, either; it's a general fact.

--best regards

[Gutbucket]

Say my primary goal is suppressing random-incidence room sound, and I choose a pair of supercardioid pattern microphones to help do that.  I'm choosing that pattern because it favors direct on-axis sound over random-incident sound more than any other at the microphone level.

I take two of those microphones and arrange them in a configuration to make a stereo recording.  I can set them up in different ways. Some of those ways have the microphones pointing more in the same direction and others have them pointing farther apart, with various distances between them.  Which choice most favors sounds arriving from the front of my mic array?  Does that answer change if I use a different pattern?  Why and in what way?

[John Willett]

The more directional the front lobe, the larger the out-of-phase rear lobe will be.

I wrote this up a while ago:-

The pressure-gradient microphone with the best directivity of 4 is dubbed the hyper-cardioid.
Its disadvantage, however, is the lack of rejection for sound coming directly from the rear
(180º). The rejection here is only 6dB. Trying to optimise the directional characteristics,
Sennheiser created a super-cardioid microphone with equal rejection at 90º and 180º. This
improves the rear rejection figure without sacrificing the side rejection figure too much, and still
retains a high directional coefficient of 3.86.
The theoretical figures for the various cottage-loaf microphones are:-

Hyper-Cardioid
The hyper-cardioid microphone has it’s angle of maximum rejection at 109.5º.
It is optimised for the maximum directivity coefficient of 4.0.
Rejection at 90º is -12dB
Rejection at 180º is -6dB

Super-Cardioid
The super-cardioid microphone has it’s angle of maximum rejection at 125.3º.
It is optimised for the maximum front to rear index and has a directivity coefficient of 3.73.
Rejection at 90º is -8.7dB
Rejection at 180º is -11.6dB

Balanced Super-Cardioid
The Balanced super-cardioid microphone has it’s angle of maximum rejection at 120º.
It is optimised for equal attenuation at 90º and 180º, it has a directivity coefficient of 3.86.
Rejection at 90º is -9.5dB
Rejection at 180º is also -9.5dB
The attenuation at 90º is equal to the attenuation at 180º (the 180º signal being out-of-phase of
course), this means that the attention is concentrated on the sound coming to the front of the
microphone. The disadvantage of the hyper-cardioid is that sounds from the rear can be too
high due to the lack of rear attenuation, and the disadvantage of the standard super-cardioid is
that its side rejection is not enough.

Please note that these are the theoretical figures which may differ slightly in practice.

[Gutbucket]

Thanks John,  I always smile when I see patterns with an out-of-phase lobe described as cottage-loaf.  It's an apt description even if I've never seen an actual English cottage loaf.

I ask the questions above because I'm curious about the performance of stereo arrays that are combinations of these individual microphone polar patterns.  I have a feel for what happens and why, developed simply from trying things and thinking about it, but I have no real theoretical basis for what Todd R, Freelunch & I are suggesting in our posts above.  I may be making some incorrect assumptions, but this is how my thinking goes:

As a simplification, lets assume two cardioid mics and forget about worrying about an appropriate stereo recording angle.  If I place those mics coincident and pointing 180 degrees apart, the result should be an equal pickup of sound in all (horizontal) directions around the mic array when considering the sum of the stereo information, not each mic individually.  If instead I point them in the same direction, the sum of the stereo information will favor sound from the direction in which they are pointed and suppress sound arriving directly from the rear, to the greatest extent possible using the cardioid pattern.  Obviously there is no real stereo information in that case because the mics are coincident and pointing the same direction, but we're ignoring the recording angle at this point. 

Those two configurations are the extreme positions along the X/Y angle continuum for coincident cardioids.  I probably wouldn't choose either but instead choose something in between, and choosing an angle in between would mean that the total direct sound pickup of the stereo array would also fall somewhere between that of the extremes.

If I then want to keep that maximum forward directional coefficient of the stereo array, but actually record stereo information, I can keep the two cardioid patterns pointing directly ahead, but separate them so that they act like A-B spaced omnis using time of arrival differences to produce stereo.  They should then continue to maximally reject direct sound arriving from the rear of the array and also produce A-B time-based stereo.

If I'm willing to trade some of that maximal rear rejection for other attributes, I can adjust the angle between microphones angles against the spacing between them to: 1) adjust my desired recording angle,  2) change the balance of time-difference vs level-difference stereo,  3) adjust how much direct sound arriving from the front is favored over direct sound arriving from the back, within the limits of the directional coefficient of the cardioid pattern.  I make that adjustment with the understanding that all three are inter-related so I'm changing all three of those things at the same time.

Extending that line of thought to other microphone polar patterns is somewhat more complicated, and is where I start to wonder if my empirical based understanding begins to break down.  Trying to paint a mental visual image of the averaged stereo-sum pattern of two cottage-loaf microphones positioned at various angles starts to exceed my mental imaging abilities. I'd think that supercardioids (for example) would behave in a way similar to the example I made above using cardioids, within the limits of the individual polar pattern of the mics as outlined in your post, but perhaps I'm missing something.

[Gutbucket]

I’ll add that I'm specifically talking about things that effect the amount of direct-arrival sound from the front relative to that from other directions, and not the indirect-arrival diffuse sound. I realize that reverberant room sound is diffuse and will not be affected by these microphone patterns and angles in the same way. 

To bring the technical discussion home, a big problem for live concert tapers is often the loud guy standing directly behind (or to the side of) the recording position. Direct reflections off back or side walls also fit the same category.  That loud guy contributes little to the overall indirect-arrival diffuse sound when compared to all the other sound in the room.  It’s his direct sound that is the problem (ironically the loud guy in front of the recording position can be less of a problem, since his contribution is projected away from the microphones and is blocked somewhat by his body).  With that in mind, I think it would be helpful to discuss how to maximally reduce the direct sound contribution from the sides and back vs that from the front, in a big-picture way that considers both the properties of the microphone’s pattern and the contribution of that pattern to the stereo configuration.  After all, we are primarily using microphones in stereo pairs around here, not by themselves.

I’ve noticed that two microphones with maximal rejection 120 degree off-axis like the balanced supercardioids you mention above, arranged with say a 100 degree angle between them, nearly aligns the maximum rejection of both microphones towards the rear (+/- 170 degrees or just 20 degrees apart), and the side pointing rejection of each opposing microphone will be -70 degrees off-axis from the front.  I’m not sure how the sum of the total stereo pattern works out in that case, but it would seem to be effective at somewhat reducing the direct sound of loud guys behind and to the sides, and might make for a reasonable choice.   Maybe the optimal solution would be to angle the microphones so that their angles of maximal rejection are evenly spaced around the back and sides, with those of one microphone exactly halfway between those of the other.

~baking mental pumpernickel/rye stereo cottage-loaves..