MicSense

MicSense answers "which mic goes there?" the way the question is actually asked. Every other microphone database is organised like a studio catalogue — large-diaphragm condenser, small-diaphragm condenser, ribbon. Nobody standing at a drum riser thinks in those terms. They think what goes in the kick, or what survives a screamer on a wedge, or which capsule fits the rental handheld. MicSense filters by that first and by microphone type second.

Who it is for

• FOH and monitor engineers advancing a gig against a rider they did not write.
• Bands and production managers deciding whether to specify an SM58 or an e 935, and wanting the reason rather than an opinion.
• Anyone settling an argument at soundcheck — the per-mic pages open without a login, on a phone.

What makes it different

• Tagged by application. Nineteen live applications, from kick in to wireless bodypack capsule. Chips combine as "any of these" and stack with type, polar pattern and an On the rider toggle.
• One scale for every curve. Response charts are drawn 20 Hz–20 kHz logarithmic, −20 to +15 dB, on every mic. That fixed scale is what makes two microphones comparable at a glance, instead of a patchwork of manufacturer screenshots at different scales.
• Sourced, and it says so. Every figure comes from that manufacturer's own published datasheet for that model, and each page links to it. Where a manufacturer publishes nothing, you get a dash — never an invented number and never a zero.
• Compare up to four. One spec table with a column per mic, the response curves overlaid in four colours, the polar diagrams side by side. The URL is shareable.

How to use it

1. Filter. Tap the applications you are miking. Narrow with type, polar pattern, the search box, or On the rider only. Your filters are remembered on this device.
2. Open a mic. Spec table, response curve, one polar diagram per listed pattern, and one to three short factual notes.
3. Build a comparison. Add to comparison on any card or detail page fills the tray at the bottom of the screen. It holds four and survives a reload.
4. Compare. The tray's Compare button opens the overlay. Removing a mic from the tray updates the chart and the URL live.

What the diagrams do and do not claim

The frequency response curve is drawn from coordinates read off the manufacturer's own published response graph and re-plotted on the MicSense scale. No manufacturer graphic is embedded or copied, and no extra points are invented to smooth a curve — the line passes through the entered coordinates and nothing else.

The polar diagram is generated from the standard first-order directivity formula for the pattern type, r(θ) = a + (1 − a) · cos θ. It illustrates what cardioid, supercardioid or hypercardioid means. It is not a measurement of the individual model, and a real mic's pattern narrows and widens with frequency in ways the formula does not show.

Public reference pages

Every microphone also has a page at /micsense/mic/<slug> that needs no account — the spec table, the curve, the polar diagram and the notes. Those are the pages to send a promoter mid-advance, or to link from a rider.

Limits

• The library is hand-curated, a datasheet at a time. Depth on the mics that turn up on European riders beats breadth across thousands of studio microphones nobody here is choosing between.
• On the rider is one engineer's judgement call from real gigs, not a survey.
• Sensitivity is shown as the manufacturer published it. Where only mV/Pa is given, the dBV/Pa figure is derived and marked with ≈.