MicSense

Free. The reference pages are open to everyone; the filter, compare and substitute app opens with a free Squaresmile account.

MicSense answers "which mic goes there?" the way the question is actually asked. Most microphone databases are 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. That fixed scale is what makes two microphones comparable at a glance, instead of a patchwork of manufacturer screenshots at different scales. Only mics whose published graph has been redrawn have a curve; the others say so.
• Sourced, and it says so. Figures come from the manufacturer's own published documents for that model — datasheet, spec sheet or product page. Each page links its source and says when it was last checked. An empty cell says why: not published by the maker, or not yet checked by MicSense. It is never filled with a guess and never shown as 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 with anyone signed in.

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 (where one has been redrawn), 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.

Instrument ranges on the chart

Above every response chart — on a mic's page and in the comparison — Show an instrument's range picks a source: kick, snare, toms, hi-hat, cymbals, bass guitar, electric guitar (cab), acoustic guitar, piano, violin, trumpet, tenor sax, flute, male or female vocal, or speech. Its typical range is shaded behind the curve in two bands: fundamentals / body (solid) and harmonics / attack (hatched), each named above the plot and listed in figures under the picker. Your pick is remembered on this device and follows you from mic to mic.

The bands are typical and approximate — real instruments, tunings and players move them around. They are context for reading the curve, not a recommendation, and the curve itself remains an approximate redrawing. The ranges are the same table RoomSense uses, after Owsinski (The Mixing Engineer's Handbook), Izhaki (Mixing Audio) and Sweetwater's frequency cheat sheet; speech uses the average speaking pitch and the 1–4 kHz region that carries most of the intelligibility (ANSI S3.5).

Under the ranges, MicSense says whether the mic is tagged for that source in its application tags (for a kick: kick in or kick out). That line reads only the tags shown on the filter chips; a mic without the tag can still be the right choice.

What the diagrams do and do not claim

The frequency response curve is redrawn from the manufacturer's own published response graph and re-plotted on the MicSense scale. No manufacturer graphic is embedded or copied. A redrawn curve is approximate: it is kept only while it stays within about ±2 dB of the maker's graph, and it is a guide to the shape, not a measurement. Where no graph has been redrawn yet, the page says so and draws no curve — MicSense never estimates one from the microphone's class.

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 with its source and the date it was last checked, the curve where there is one, the polar diagram and the notes. Those are the pages to send a promoter mid-advance, or to link from a rider. They are in English only for now.

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 ≈.
• Max SPL is shown with the distortion figure it was published at (for example 1 % THD) where the maker states one — figures at different THD are not directly comparable.
• Price tier, the year introduced and On the rider are MicSense's own notes, not maker figures.
• Spotted a wrong figure? Mail support@squaresmile.de with the mic and the maker's document.

Independence

MicSense is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by any manufacturer; product names are trademarks of their owners. It sells no microphones, carries no affiliate links and shows no product photos or maker graphics.