I'm gonna be taking a look at the Sanken CS-1
soon. To those who know about this mic, is it
suppose to give more off-axis attenuation than
other mics in *just the lower frequencies*? Or is
it stronger than most directional mic's
at attenuating the higher frequencies, also?
And regarding mic off-axis attenuation in
general, I've heard that the attenuation
is only in the upper frequencies. How is
the attenuation of the spoken word?
For example, if you were interviewing
a person and off to the side there were
two people talking amongst themselves,
would their vocal frequencies be in the
the range that a mic would attenuate?

some light reading
http://www.schoeps.de/E/overview-mic-types.html#shotgun

look at the polar patern and frequencies of this cardoid, the higher frequencies are attenuated more so. The frequency range of two old bats gossiping isn't that high.
http://www.gefell-mics.com/specs_m300.htm

A hypercardoid will be tighter yet
http://www.gefell-mics.com/specs_m200_pg2.htm#hyper
click on the pattern symbol on the bottom right and the graphs will change.

Very informative, especially the frequency
response graphs. From them it appears as if,
for those mics anyways, there is no off-axis
attenuation of speech. So what *do*
directional mics attenuate, if not speech?
Does anyone know the frequency range
of the human voice?

I couldn't find the polar response for a Sanken shotgun

The cardoid Gefell atenuates 5 db at 90 deg for most freq and around 12 db at 16 khz. past 120 there is a really extensive and consistant drop accrosss the board.

I'm having trouble finding a good graph of a short shotgun showing all frequencies. If the Shoep[s writup is to be taken seriously, there is minimal difference.

Keeping the mic as close as posible and booming it from above will help isolate the sound..

Polar Response (www.sanken-mic.com/english/condenser/pdf/cs-1.pdf) for Sanken CS-1 shotgun

This may be of interest:

Rycote has published a Microphone Data CD-ROM (www.rycote.com/products/micdatacd/default.htm) with lots of info on nearly a thousand microphones and more than sixty manufacturers. It is updateable as new mics are being brought out.

It is available at B&H (www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=283291&is=REG) for just $14.95.