My brain does this thing where photography and sound keep borrowing ideas from each other. I will be setting up a shot, thinking about light and shadow, and suddenly I am thinking about microphones. Or I will be setting up a mic, and I start thinking about lenses.
Both are about choosing what you want and choosing what you do not want.
With a camera, you make decisions that shape what the viewer sees. You pick a lens. You choose an angle. You decide what is sharp and what is soft. You decide what stays in the frame and what gets cut out.
With audio, it is the same kind of thinking. You still pick a tool. You still aim it. You still decide what matters most. The big difference is that sound is more complex to “see,” so people sometimes forget it is a craft full of choices.
This whole subject came back to me because a friend asked a simple question. “Do you have a dynamic microphone?”
That question pulled a memory out of storage instantly.
My first microphone was a Shure SM58. I still have it in my office. It is one of those pieces of gear that you can hold in your hand, and suddenly you are back in a different part of your life. I can still remember what it felt like when microphones stopped being mysterious objects and started becoming tools I could actually understand.
In college, I took a course that changed how I thought about recording. The class focused on microphone polar patterns. That phrase can sound like something you only hear in a lab, but the idea is simple once you grab it.
The really memorable part was the professor. He was a well-known sound engineer in the Pittsburgh area, and I had the odd privilege of carpooling with him to school. That meant the classroom started before we ever got to campus. On some mornings, we would stop at a musician’s house to drop off equipment or talk shop. I was still learning the basics when I suddenly saw gold and platinum records on a wall while someone talked about the practical problems of recording.
Those rides did something important for me. They connected the theory to the real world. It was not just charts and vocabulary. It was people doing work where sound mattered, and where tiny choices had real consequences.
To understand why polar patterns matter, it helps to take a quick step back and look at how microphones got here in the first place.
Early microphones were tied closely to the telephone. In the late 1800s, carbon microphones were a breakthrough. They converted sound into an electrical signal in a way that was good enough for voice communication. That was huge. Once sound becomes a signal, you can send it down a wire, amplify it, and later on, record it.
Then technology kept moving. In the early 1900s, better designs arrived, including the condenser microphone. That design became known for detail and clarity compared to the older carbon style designs. Over time you also get ribbon microphones, dynamic microphones, and all the variations that audio people love to argue about in the best possible way.
As microphones improved, a new question became more important.
Not only “Can we capture sound?” but also “Can we choose which sound we capture?”
That is where polar patterns enter the story.
A polar pattern is basically the microphone’s listening shape. It tells you where the mic is sensitive and where it is less sensitive. If you are in a room with talking, traffic, air vents, footsteps, and a chair that squeaks at the worst time, the polar pattern helps you decide what the mic will focus on and what it will reduce.
Here is how I think of it in photography terms.
A wide-angle lens captures more of the scene. A tighter lens narrows your view and helps you isolate a subject. Microphone patterns do the same thing, just with sound instead of light.
Let’s walk through the common patterns in a way that feels like real life, not a textbook.
Omnidirectional is the wide-angle lens of microphones.
An omnidirectional microphone picks up sound from all directions. Front, back, sides, it does not really care. That can be exactly what you want when you are trying to capture a space's natural sound. Think choir, group singing, room ambience, or a situation where the room itself is part of the recording.
Cardioid is where most people start to feel the power of direction.
Cardioid microphones focus mainly on what is in front of them, and they reduce a lot of what comes from behind. The name “cardioid” comes from the heart-like shape of the pickup pattern. In practical terms, it is a pattern that helps you point the microphone at the thing you want most. That is why cardioid mics are so common for vocals, podcasts, and live sound.
They help you separate the voice from the mess behind it.
Then you get into supercardioid and hypercardioid.
These patterns take that focus and tighten it even more. They are useful when you need extra isolation, such as on a loud stage or on a film set with uncontrollable noise. The tradeoff is that they tend to pick up a little more sound from the rear than a standard cardioid, so you still have to think about what is behind the mic.
They are focused tools, and focused tools reward careful placement.
Figure 8 is a fun one because it feels like it has its own personality.
A figure 8 pattern hears the front and the back, and it reduces the sides. This is a powerful option for interviews, duets, and some stereo recording setups. It is also the kind of pattern that makes you think about space differently, as it clearly captures two directions.
When I record interviews or podcasts, even though a figure-8 microphone can capture two people at once, I usually prefer separate microphones for each person. That gives me cleaner control later. If someone coughs, bumps the table, or makes a stray noise, it is much easier to fix when each person is on their own mic.
Shotgun microphones are the telephoto lens of the audio world.
They are extremely directional. They are built to focus on a sound source at a distance while reducing much of the surrounding sound. That is why you see them in film and television, often on a boom pole, aimed right at the dialogue. They help you grab the voice without needing a mic in the shot.
Subcardioid sits between omni and cardioid.
It gives you a little more room sound than cardioid, but it still keeps the focus on the main source. This can be a great choice when you want things to feel natural, especially with acoustic instruments or recordings where the space matters but should not take over.
Hemispherical and boundary microphones solve different kinds of problems.
Sometimes you are not aiming a mic at one person. Sometimes you are trying to cover a whole table, a stage floor, or a conference room. Hemispherical patterns are often used when a mic is placed on a flat surface and captures the space in front of it.
Boundary microphones, including what many people call PZM microphones, are designed for wide-area pickup and are often placed on flat surfaces. They became popular for large rooms, theaters, and conference spaces where you want coverage without having to place stands everywhere.
Then there is wireless, which has become a major part of modern live sound.
Wireless microphones give you freedom of movement, and that can be a game-changer on stage. The tradeoff is that wired microphones can still have an edge in certain high-end situations, especially when you want the most consistent performance and the cleanest signal path. Still, for many real-world uses, convenience wins, and wireless is doing much of the heavy lifting now.
When I try to boil it all down, I come back to the same simple idea.
A polar pattern is a decision.
It is the decision to capture this and reduce that.
That is the same kind of decision I make in photography every time I choose a lens and frame a shot. A lens changes what the viewer experiences. A polar pattern changes what the listener experiences. In both cases, the tool is not the art itself; it makes the art possible.
That is why this stuff still interests me. It is history, engineering, and creative work, all mixed together. A simple question about a dynamic microphone can send my mind back to a college car ride, a classroom lesson, and the moment when sound stopped being magic and started being a craft.
