Topic: Has anyone used the Sennheiser MKH 8050 (hypers)? Paging John W...

[Todd R]

Supercardioid can be an extremely useful pattern if well done, but it's harder to do than cardioid or (especially) omni. Again just going by the postings on this board, I think the pattern tends to be misunderstood and misperceived--as evidenced by the fact that so many people don't care to distinguish it from hypercardioid...

Lots of good info in this thread.  Thanks especially to DSatz and John.

In defense of this board, a lot of the confusion is that manufacturers don't always distinguish between hypercard and supercard.  Certainly this is true of lower tier manufacturers, but even high-end mic manufacturers are guilty.

Not to name names, but Microtech Gefell (who I would def list as a high-end mic mfg) calls their m210/m210 a hypercardioid mic.  To me, it looks like a supercard.

In fact, the m210 from my readings of their published lit (which I admit is dangerous -- I don't know this stuff that well) looks like that if anything it tends a little towards the cardioid side of things from an ideal supercard pattern, not that it is designed somewhere between supercard and hypercard and thus they just decided to market it as a hypercard.  Don't get me wrong, I loved the m210s when I owned them, probably my favorite "hypercard" mic.  But my ears and my reading of their published literature told me that it just wasn't far enough from a cardioid to justify my keeping it to fill my needs for a "hypercard" mic (though admittedly, I probably only want something between a supercard and hypercard anyway).

[John Willett]

Supercardioid can be an extremely useful pattern if well done, but it's harder to do than cardioid or (especially) omni. Again just going by the postings on this board, I think the pattern tends to be misunderstood and misperceived--as evidenced by the fact that so many people don't care to distinguish it from hypercardioid...

Lots of good info in this thread.  Thanks especially to DSatz and John.

In defense of this board, a lot of the confusion is that manufacturers don't always distinguish between hypercard and supercard.  Certainly this is true of lower tier manufacturers, but even high-end mic manufacturers are guilty.

Not to name names, but Microtech Gefell (who I would def list as a high-end mic mfg) calls their m210/m210 a hypercardioid mic.  To me, it looks like a supercard.

In fact, the m210 from my readings of their published lit (which I admit is dangerous -- I don't know this stuff that well) looks like that if anything it tends a little towards the cardioid side of things from an ideal supercard pattern, not that it is designed somewhere between supercard and hypercard and thus they just decided to market it as a hypercard.  Don't get me wrong, I loved the m210s when I owned them, probably my favorite "hypercard" mic.  But my ears and my reading of their published literature told me that it just wasn't far enough from a cardioid to justify my keeping it to fill my needs for a "hypercard" mic (though admittedly, I probably only want something between a supercard and hypercard anyway).

The Gefell M210 is definitely a super-cardioid and not a hyper-cardioid.

There are differences between super-cardioid and hyper-cardioid microphones, though many people seem to use the two terms as the same thing.

There are, however, important differences between the different types of cottage-loaf microphone patterns.

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 (180°). The rejection here is only 6dB. Trying to optimise the directional characteristics, Sennheiser and others created a super-cardioid microphone with equal rejection at 90° and 180°. This improves the rear rejection figure without sacrificing the side rejection figure too much, and still retains a high directional coefficient of 3.86. I am calling this a "modern" super-cardioid to differentiate it from the standard one.

The theoretical figures for the various cottage-loaf microphones are:-

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

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

Modern Super-Cardioid
The modern super-cardioid microphone has it’s angle of maximum rejection at 120°. It is optimised for equal attenuation at 90° and 180°, it has a directivity coefficient of 3.86. Rejection at 90° is -9.5dB Rejection at 180° is also -9.5dB The attenuation at 90° is equal to the attenuation at 180° (the 180° 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.

I hope this helps in explaining things.

[Gutbucket]

I'll add some personal insight I've gained over the last year and a half or so from using an ambisonic mic with user adjustable polar patterns.  For those unfamiliar, the system allows the user to adjust microphone patterns and angles after the recording has been made, while listening to playback.

Keep in mind a few constraints-
I've used this primarily for on-stage recordings, and I think perhaps more importantly,
the system is restricted to coincident mic configurations only.

Given that, I most often find myself settling on a polar pattern that lies some where around hypercardioid as defined by John's post above, with an angle between mics of anywhere from 110 to 120 degrees.   Generally, and as you'd expect, as the polar pattern is adjusted more towards figure-8, I narrow the angle between microphones to something closer to 90 degrees (classic Blumlien) or even less.  Likewise, as the polar pattern is adjusted to be closer to cardioid, a wider angle becomes preferable.  My primary observation about that aspect is this: For coincident arrangements, the optimal combinations of pattern and angle are usually those in which the primary axis of one microphone is approximately aligned with the angle of maximum rejection of the other.

Given that, the decision on which of those particular combinations of pattern & angle is best is usually primarily determined by optimizing the direct/reverberant balance and degree of 'openness' in the spatial timbre of the recording (cardioids sounding drier, more direct and closed at one extreme, excluding the subcarioid to omni end of the polar spectrum, and Blumlein figure-8's sounding more reverberant, 'airy' and 'spatially open' at the other).  Secondarily the choice is determined by the stereo spread and imaging of the direct sound sources, but I find those aspects can be regained at other combinations of pattern and angle, whereas the reverberant balance and spatial openness cannot.

Again I emphasize that this applies specifically to coincident mic setups.  Near-spaced and wider arrangements will differ by trading angle between mics for more distance between them.  To a lesser extent, these observations may be specific to the scenarios in which I've made these recordings, yet I feel comfortable extending the observation to coincident mic arrangements in general.