Pickup Pattern and the Polar Diagram

  • The pickup pattern describes the direction-dependent sound characteristics of a microphone
  • Each microphone type has a typical pattern such as "omni", "cardioid", "supercardioid", "figure-of-eight" etc.
  • The polar diagram is a representation in polar coordinates which indicates (mostly for different frequency bands) how sensitive a microphone is from a certain direction compared to the main recording direction