January 7, 2008
An Overview of Popular Short Shotgun, Supercardioid, Hypercardiod and Cardioid Microphones
By Dan Brockett
Is This Article For You?
Take a deep breath; we are about to embark on an epic journey through the world of location sound microphones. Yeah, I know, sounds like a bit of hyperbole, right? If you read all of the ads in the trade magazines, hang out on some Internet sound forums and talk to sound mixers, perhaps you have reached a sublime level of crystalline understanding about location sound microphones OR more likely, you may be a little confused by all of the conflicting information out there like most us. That's what makes this an epic journey; there are so many microphones out there and so much conflicting information. Everyone seems to have his or her favorites and everyone disputes how much you need to spend to buy a great microphone. I decided to wade into this article with an open mind and some audio knowledge but I am decidedly not a professional location sound mixer. Since I produce and shoot video myself, and often do my own sound recording, I am writing this article for an audience of camera owners like myself who may know a little about location sound, but may not have the chance to audition this many microphones in person before buying one. If you are a cameraperson, director or producer who buys, rents and uses professional sound gear, this article will provide some good starting points in your search for the right microphone. I hope that by reading about my experience with these microphones and listening to some samples I have recorded in several different types of situations, you will be armed with knowledge that will help you make an intelligent buying or rental decision so that your projects will have a polished professional sound mix.
I am not an engineer and I don't know all of the answers but I can tell you that after reading this article and carefully listening to the recorded samples, you will have saved yourself several days of shopping, internet research to hunt down disparate sound samples and lots of misinformation that you might hear from uninformed sound forum posters, salespeople or retailers who just didn't do their research or have a vested interest in not being unbiased. There are no clear-cut winners and losers amongst these microphones; this review is not a contest. All of the microphones I tested and reviewed are capable of excellent sound. Not a single one of the microphones sounded "bad". Some were better than others or stood out from the rest for specific sound qualities though, the purpose of this article is to help you find the best microphones for your needs, taste and budget. This is why I decided to review microphones that range from U.S. $259.00 in cost to almost U.S. $2,000.00. It's all about discovering which microphones suit your needs as well as your finances.
From Then to Now, A Bit of Background
In order to understand why buyers want better quality audio, it is helpful to know why video and film shooters care or should care about sound quality. With the democratization of video equipment in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was also an influx of new users creating video and films. When it took a minimum of a $50,000.00 to $100,000.00 investment in gear to create professional quality video, the typical broadcast or industrial camcorder user was an experienced professional. Video and film shooters manned the camera and usually a professional sound mixer, sometimes along with a boom operator was included on the call sheet. When the economic equation required producing quality video changed to needing just a few thousand dollars of gear to create the same relative image and sound quality, tens of thousands of new users began to shoot and produce web content, television, films, corporate video and many other types of programming using the new inexpensive gear. As the number of camcorder users increased, they were doing their own sound mixing on video and film shoots and learning as they went along with a lot of on-the-job experimentation.
In 2001, I wrote a Low Cost Shotgun article because at the time, it seemed that everyone was looking for the right microphone to use with the newly popular low-cost Mini DV camcorders. The word of the day was cheap. When your new MiniDV camcorder cost $3,000.00 and made decent quality pictures, who wanted to spend $2,000.00 on a microphone? In this era, significantly reduced production budgets were eliminating crew positions, often including the sound mixer and or boom operator. There was a whole influx of new users who knew very little about sound mixing that were out shooting their projects and looking to purchase audio gear. Many people seemed to think that they could obtain adequate sound quality with a camera-mounted microphone. As most of us know, you cannot refute the laws of physics but many learned about this the hard way.
The HD Era and Sound
We are beginning to see significant change in audio for video production with the advent of the Hi-Definition era. While the costs for HD production have fallen rapidly as the demand for HD programming and the gear to shoot it has risen, in general, HD production gear is significantly more expensive than standard definition video gear was. HD camcorders record digital sound with significantly better quality then their generally poor sounding Mini DV and analog sound Betacam SP predecessors did. In my experience, the newer generation HDV and HD camcorders have better microphone pre-amps and quieter audio paths than the previous generation MiniDV camcorders had.
Many broadcast and delivery specs for programming now accept and often expect edited masters be delivered with multi-channel surround sound. It seems that with the advent of HD production, filmmakers and videographers today seem to be looking for better quality sound than they were just a few years ago. Hi-Def puts increased demands on the quality of the sound expected as well as the picture. More end users are listening to HD programming on high-end, high-resolution sound systems that they have added to their 60" HD sets. The day of the average viewer hearing their television and films through a 2" bad sounding mono speaker is not completely over but that day is thankfully dying a quick death.
Conventional Wisdom Says...
In 2001, I wrote, "there is really no such thing as a good all around microphone." Six years later, I feel that this is just as true as it was in 2001. In the ensuing years since then, there have been no new technical revelations that allow a microphone to function well in all sound situations. There are multiple-capsule systems that do allow a lot of flexibility though such as the Schoeps Collette system, the Oktava MK-012 and the Sennheiser K6/ME system as well as several others that let you use different types of capsules that each have different pickup patterns in conjunction with a dedicated power-supply/base. I have used several of these systems and they can be a decent, if not perfect solution to those of us who shoot in many different sorts of physical locations. These modular systems use the same power supply, matched with several different capsules, each with different pickup patterns. The goal is always to record the subject with the most natural, uncolored sound possible and to eliminate as many of the extraneous sounds not emanating from the subject as possible. These extraneous sounds are often referred to as "off-axis sound", meaning that in a practical sense, when you are recording a line from your talent, you want to hear as little of the traffic sound from the road next to them as possible while hearing their voice clearly and with great detail.
What Are The Most Common Microphone Types and Pickup Patterns For Location Sound?
The terminology in how manufacturers and users categorize and name microphones can be a bit confusing because it's not consistent. In general, for location sound, there are several types of commonly used boom microphones. I like to loosely categorize them into the following groups:
- Long shotguns
These microphones, in my opinion, are typically most useful for recording sound for noisy exteriors or when you cannot locate the microphone very close to the source. Long shotguns typically have a very narrow angle of acceptance. If you check out
the polar pattern for a long shotgun, (an overhead visual representation of a microphone's pickup pattern), you will usually see that an unfortunate side effect of having an extremely narrow angle of acceptance is a lot of ancillary sound pickup at the rear of the microphone. As you might imagine, when shooting interiors, this means that the crew and activity behind the microphone, along with the room's reverberant characteristics are usually picked up as well, making long shotguns not very useful for recording interiors. Another practical concern of using long shotguns is that when combined with a suspension mount and windscreen and furry windscreen cover, a long shotgun is physically huge and long. This can be difficult to manage when there is not enough physical room to use the microphone under overhangs or in rooms with low ceilings and it's immense size and length can be a visual distraction for talent as well.
-
Short Shotguns
This short shotgun is the more diminutive relative of the long shotgun. Most manufacturers that offer short shotguns also offer long shotguns, often in the same product line or with a similar sound quality, usually just with a different pickup pattern. Besides being physically smaller than a long shotgun, most short shotguns offer a somewhat wider pickup pattern than long shotguns, usually coupled with more rear axis noise rejection. The short shotgun is probably the most commonly used microphone in location sound. They vary widely in cost and sound quality and almost all of the major audio manufacturers offer at least one, if not multiple iterations of the short shotgun. Generally, most sound mixers use short shotguns in normal exterior locations although plenty of interiors are recorded using short shotguns as well.
- Supercardioids
A Supercardioid microphone has a pickup pattern between a cardioid and a lobar short shotgun with more off axis rejection than a cardioid but not as narrow of angle of pickup as a short shotgun. I know, what does lobar mean? A microphone with a lobar polar pattern has the highest possible directivity. Lobar polar pattern is often referred to as: supercardioid/lobar, or hypercardioid/lobar polar pattern, but both supercardioid and hypercardioid patterns are slightly less directional than the lobar pattern. A lobar pick-up pattern is achieved with a shotgun microphone only.
A supercardioid microphone also usually features more rear axis pickup than a cardioid. Four out of the twelve microphones I reviewed for this article were supercardioids or short shotguns with a supercardioid pickup pattern. There are some shotguns that list a line + gradient pickup pattern and some that just list the pickup pattern as supercardioid and some that label their pickup pattern as lobar. As with many descriptors in sound, there is some confusion about exact terminology. In my experience, supercardioid microphones typically are physically shorter than short shotguns but a lot of this categorization becomes whatever the manufacturer wants to categorize the microphone as. I have seen the Schoeps CMIT5u labeled as a long shotgun, short shotgun and as a supercardioid by the manufacturer, retailers and end users so keep this in mind as you read the product descriptions for each microphone. Where available, I have tried to include pickup pattern graphs for each microphone. These graphs, along with the spec sheets for each microphone will tell you all you need to know as far as what kind of microphone each model is.
- Hypercardioids
As you may have guessed by now, a hypercardioid has a similar pickup pattern to a supercardioid but it is a wider pickup area, therefore it will usually have less rear angle pickup than a supercardioid. Hypercardioids are usually more popular for recording interiors than most of the microphone pickup patterns listed above because they are capable of providing a more natural, open and less focused sound. Using a hypercardioid with a wider pickup pattern also means it is easier to pickup multiple subjects with one boom. For hand booming dialogue scenes between multiple characters, a hypercardioid would not have to be pointed as precisely as a short shotgun or supercardioid.
- Cardioids Cardioid microphones have the widest pickup pattern of all of the microphone types I tested. The cardioid could be considered more efficient for picking up larger groups of speakers at a time and this type microphone might prove to be more efficient when trying to boom a fast moving subject. A cardioid microphone has very little pickup pattern directly behind the microphone but because the pickup pattern is so wide, the microphone does have a tendency to pickup sounds on the far sides of the microphone's pattern. An added benefit of all three of the cardioid microphones is that generally these types of microphones are physically shorter, allowing the microphone to be more easily used in spaced with low ceilings and tight spaces.
How Do You Choose Which Type Of Microphone Pickup Pattern To Use For a Given Situation?
As a rule of thumb, it's a good idea to listen to each location through at least a couple of different microphones that you think you might like to use. You may occasionally discover that a short shotgun will work for a given interior location better than a cardioid or the short shotgun may be a better choice than a long shotgun for some exteriors, it just depends on the situation and the recordist's choice of sound quality desired. This leads us back to square one; there is no perfect, all-around general microphone for the location sound mixer's bag. Brace yourself and budget yourself, you should seriously consider purchasing more than one microphone or at least a modular microphone system along with at least two capsules. Keep this in mind as you peruse the rest of this article, you can consider taking your total microphone budget and dividing it so that you can buy more than one microphone.
The Economics
This may sound a bit harsh to you, but if you have gone to lengths of purchasing a high quality camcorder, tripod, monitor, lights, grip equipment and all of the paraphernalia needed in order to produce film or video, you SHOULD consider spending a decent amount of money on your audio gear. The single most important component of your audio gear is the microphone. Depending on your needs and expectations, you don't always have to spend a lot of money on your microphones, but it does makes prudent economic sense to NOT scrimp on the quality of your microphones. Buy the right microphones to successfully record the types of projects that you plan on shooting. Many newer users fall into the trap of buying a camcorder that is too expensive for their overall production budget, then scrimping on all of the most important support components like tripods, lighting and most importantly, the sound gear. Before you buy any production gear, you have to really know how to budget your funds to craft a well-rounded production gear package. Owning a great camcorder with a lousy tripod, junky lights and a bad sounding microphone is more common than you might believe. A cheaper camcorder with good quality support gear like microphones and tripods will result in a better looking and sounding project. As you read this article you will see and hear that you don't always need to buy the most expensive microphones to record great sound, but you need to know what to buy for your particular shooting style. After spending six months with all of these microphones, in my opinion, you need to budget for at least two types of shotgun/cardioid variant microphones along with at least one lavaliere microphone for most users.
In the simplest terms, any of you who have purchased a camcorder like the Panasonic HVX-200, the Canon XL-H1, the Sony PMW-EX1 or the JVC HD-100/110 family can afford to purchase any microphone reviewed in this article. If you are reading this article and only have a $500.00 Mini DV camcorder, that is a different story, I would refer you to my original Low Cost Shotgun Microphone Comparison since in most instances it wouldn't make sense to buy a microphone that costs more than your camcorder. Since the low cost article was put on-line, many other low-cost shotguns/cardioids have appeared on the market to consider. For the rest of you who have dropped at least $8,000.00 to $10,000.00 or more on your camera package alone, I am not letting you off of the hook; seriously consider buying more than one microphone. Buy a high quality, reputable brand of sound mixer and quality lavaliere microphones, buy the best cables and headphones you can afford. But most important of all, buy the right shotgun/cardioid variant microphones. Microphones as in plural. Your completed film/video projects will be judged mostly on audio. From a technical and audience viewpoint, great graphics, cinematography, story, actors and direction are all trumped by the quality of your sound. Creating great sound takes knowing how to choose the correct microphones and having access to the right microphones to record your location sound.
Introducing...The Contestants
I make no claim that the eleven microphones tested here should be the only microphones that you consider. There were many other candidates that I would have liked to have tested and written about. I tried for months to obtain a factory sample Sennheiser MKH-416 but Sennheiser could not provide me one. I tried for months to obtain samples of the Blue Line from AKG but they could not provide factory samples. Since I wanted the test to be as fair and unbiased as possible, I decided not to rent or borrow samples, I felt that would not be fair to the manufacturers or to you. We would have no way of knowing if a rental or borrowed sample had been abused, how old it was, etc. So I decided only to test factory fresh samples direct from the manufacturers.
Unfortunately, the realities of time, and the space allotted for this article prevent me from not expanding these eleven microphones to forty or fifty models. I do feel that the microphones included are a good cross section of the most popular microphones for most users in the U.S., I do know that in other parts of the world, there are some popular brands not represented here.Since I am based in the States, it made sense to include the most popular brands that are easilyÊavailable in the U.S. and known in the U.S. The important thing to remember is that by reading this article and listening to the samples, you can train your ear and increase your knowledge of what you like and dislike in microphones. You can use this knowledge in the future when you consider buying any type of microphones. Sound is sound and high quality recording will become easier for you to recognize after you read through this article and analyze the sound samples.
The microphones are listed in alphabetical order.
Manufacturer Description of polar pattern: Line + Gradient
Audio-Technica's description of the microphone:
Dan's initial take on the microphone:
#1. Audio-Techinca AT875R
$259.00 MSRP
Audio-Technica U.S. Inc.
1221 Commerce Drive. Stow, Ohio 44224
www.audio-technica.com
Relative size: Smallest shotgun I've ever seen
Weight: 80g (2.8 oz.)
Dimensions: 175.0 mm (6.89") long, 21.0 mm (0.83") diameter
Extras: AT8405a stand clamp for 5/8"-27 threaded stands; 5/8"-27 to 3/8"-16 threaded adapter; windscreen; soft protective pouch
Cosmetics: Unusual interference tube design, I liked it
Fit and Finish: Very good, it doesn't look inexpensive
Audio-Technica's AT875R is designed for video production and broadcast (ENG/EFP) audio acquisition. Audio-Technica's shortest shotgun microphone, it mounts conveniently on a HDV/DV or HD camcorder without adding noticeable heft, and is ideal for use with compact digital cameras. This high-performance microphone offers a narrow acceptance angle of line + gradient design. It also features smooth, natural-sounding on-axis audio quality and excellent off-axis rejection of sound arriving from the sides and rear of mic.
I first heard about the AT875R at NAB 2007. The niche that Audio-Technica seems to be trying to fill with the 875r seems to be the camcorder mounted short shotgun. It's small, inexpensive and seems to be a perfect candidate for on-camera use. Except that you should know that mounting a microphone on your camcorder, no matter how good-sounding the microphone, is a recipe for horrible audio quality. We are more interested in how the AT875R performed as a proper boom mic.
