Best Unidirectional Shotgun Microphone?

[John Willett]

I am not sure there is a real difference between a super- and a hyper-cardioid. I think it is more that different manufacturers use one term or the other. More a case of they are more directional than a cardioid, and less directional than a figure-8. You can find a lot of nit-picking both ways if you look about a bit. Anyone know of a company that claims to make both types?

Sorry, you are wrong. A hyper-cardioid is different from a super-cardioid. It is more directional and pays for it by having a larger out-of-phase rear lobe.

Although, more recently, manufacturers have been making a "hybrid" that is between the two patterns - designed so the rear lobe at the rear is the same attenuation as at 90˚.

 

[John Willett]

To sum things up - the mic. that does what the OP asked for is the Schoeps Super CMiT.

Otherwise I would use the lastst MKH 8060 or 8070 as these are much better than the ancient 416 and 816 series. And the MKH series are RF condensers that are much better in the damp than normal condensers. :thumbsup:

 

[John Willett]

I am not sure there is a real difference between a super- and a hyper-cardioid.

To clarify this point - these are the technical details between the cottage-loaf designs:-

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, some manufactures 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 call this, for clarification a "balanced" super-cardioid as the attenuation is the same at the sides and rear.

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

Balanced Super-Cardioid
The balanced 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.

 

[graywolf]

Well, Mr Willett, I have seen claims that the super-card is more directional than the hyper-card, and vise versa (I tend to think your way about it). What I personally have not seen is a manufacturer that claims to make both types*, that tends to make me think it is more hooey than actual fact. Sure some are more directional than others, but I doubt that the label is what makes them so. In a world not run by advertising executives that probably would not be so, but...

*A little web research shows Shure claims to make both types, but they describe them as being for the same use...

Note: by definition it's: omni, card, s-card, h-card, bi (fig8), shotgun, parabolic. However some manufactures seem to switch s & h, some use the terms interchangably. Which was my original point. In most cases either one will work.

 

[Jim Feeley]

All other shotguns have a rear, out of phase, lobe that will pick up sound from the rear.

In my limited tryout, the Sanken CSR-2 lived up to its promise of almost no functional rear lobe. And it has a rather narrow/directional pickup pattern. It's also about US$3,000 less than the Schoeps SuperCMIT. I'm not saying the CSR-2 is the equal of the SuperCMIT, but it seems like a good professional mic for certain uses. For the record, I own both Sanken and Schoeps mics, but not either of these particular models.
http://www.sanken-mic.com/en/product/product.cfm/8.1001700

Also, in my experience, the terms hypercardioid and supercardioid are kind of fungible in practice even if they shouldn't be. John's detailing the differences looks super useful (or should I say hyperuseful? :laugh. I too think of hypers as being more directional, but I find it's useful to bring in other factors when choosing a mic (such as self noise, quality of the shoulders/off-axis falloff, resistance to RF & humidity, price, etc)...especially when the terms get tossed around so interchangeably.

 

[Noiz2]

I think that the difference is between what is the actual definition and what marketing thinks sounds best. Kind of like we live with "24p" which is actually 23.976, except in rare cases it is actually 24...

 

[cpreston]

I recently did a mic test that I will hopefully upload when I get a chance to edit it. I set up a bunch of higher end mics in small room and placed a speaker at various locations that was creating a fan like noise. I've been wondering what the best mic would be rejecting hvac systems in small room interviews. I don't have a SuperCmit, but I included the CMIT-5U, CS-3e, and 641. I tend to mic about a foot over a person's mouth. At that distance, it really just doesn't matter. the CS-3e had about 3db more attenuation when the sound source was directly over top of the mics, but nothing that I could pickup without looking at meters. Also, long shotguns actually start to get worse in an enclosed spaces due to interference from reflections and the ever increasing rear lobes. I used to have a Rode NTG-8 and realized that it didn't help at all in noisy enclosed spaces. A long shotgun is really only useful when the rear lobe is pointed at the sky and the sound source is much farther away than they should be.

 

[doubledark]

I recently did a mic test that I will hopefully upload when I get a chance to edit it. I set up a bunch of higher end mics in small room

looking forward to the results as this filming scenario would be quite common for many of us

 

[John Willett]

Well, Mr Willett, I have seen claims that the super-card is more directional than the hyper-card, and vise versa (I tend to think your way about it). What I personally have not seen is a manufacturer that claims to make both types*, that tends to make me think it is more hooey than actual fact. Sure some are more directional than others, but I doubt that the label is what makes them so. In a world not run by advertising executives that probably would not be so, but...

*A little web research shows Shure claims to make both types, but they describe them as being for the same use...

Note: by definition it's: omni, card, s-card, h-card, bi (fig8), shotgun, parabolic. However some manufactures seem to switch s & h, some use the terms interchangably. Which was my original point. In most cases either one will work.

What I wrote are the correct definitions.

Anyone who claims a super-cardioid is more directional than a hyper is, unfortunately, plain wrong.

Though I would have to agree that many manufacturers are a bit wooly in how they describe the patterns, which is not very helpful.

The best way is to look at my descriptions and then compare that to the published polar-diagrams.

I would say, though, that pretty well all the Sennheiser super-cardioids are the "balanced" type with approx. 10dB attenuation at the sides and rear and the null angle at 120˚.

 

[cpreston]

looking forward to the results as this filming scenario would be quite common for many of us

I put together a video from my mic test.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f8sZXDMfJA

I'll quote my findings that I put in the video description:
"The video plays quick snippets of each mic with the background noise in various locations. The last two snippets at the end of the video include basic noise reduction processing. The results show that each mic changes the tone of the background noise differently, but no mic has an appreciable advantage at reducing the overall volume of the background noise."

Personally, I think the Schoeps 641 is almost always the best mic for this type of shooting just due to the sound quality. Longer mics just tend to pick up more reverb and rear lobe noise. The Sanken CS-3e seems to do the best at pulling out the voice from the background noise due to the better mid and high range frequency cancellation and a slight bump in the frequencies for voice intelligibility. Both the 641 and the CS-3e seem to do the best with coloration of off axis sound as well.