THE BIDIRECTIONAL MICROPHONE: A Forgotten Patriarch

摘要

Despite being one of the progenitors of allmodern microphones and recordingtechniques, the bidirectional pattern is stillnot very well understood; its proper andeffective use remains somewhat of amystery to many recording and soundreinforcement engineers.In this paper, the bidirectional microphonewill be examined from historical, technical,and operational perspectives. We willreview how it developed and exists as afundamental element of almost all othersingle-order microphone patterns. In thecourse of describing how this unique patternresponds to soundwaves arriving fromdifferent angles of incidence, we will showthat it very often can be successfullyemployed where other more commonly-usedmicrophones cannot.