BOYA BY-VM600 Cardioid Condenser Shotgun Microphone

The BOYA BY-VM600 Cardioid Condenser Shotgun Microphone is suitable for general sound recording. An ideal accessory to lift the sound quality of your DSLR camera or camcorder to a higher level. The coldshoe on the bottom of the BY-VM600 attaches to the camera's hotshoe, after which you connect the 3.5mm cable. After inserting an AA battery (not included), you can turn on the BY-VM600 microphone with a slider on the back. With the other two sliders, a low-cut filter and a +10 dB booster can be enabled. This respectively reduces background noise and increases the sound level by 10 dB. The BY-VM600 features a rubber shock absorber, which minimises cracking noise during movement. The windshield ensures that the noise of the wind is limited while recording.

A shotgun microphone is a highly directional microphone that must be pointed directly at its target sound source for proper recording. Shotgun microphones use unidirectional microphones to achieve this high beam of concentration on the sound source to record the sound. Being that they use unidirectional microphones, they pick up sound well when the sound source is directly in front of them but begin to pick up the sound worse (much lower) when the sound source is moved to the sides and rear. A shotgun gets its name from the fact that the body of the microphone is shaped like the barrel of a shotgun, and just like a shotgun, the microphone must be aimed or pointed directly at its target source in order to effectively to pick it up.

A typical polar response for a shotgun microphone is shown. Polar plots tell us the gain of the microphone for all the various directions that it points to in relation to the sound source. The 0 Degree reference point is when the shotgun microphone is pointing directly in front of the sound source that it is recording. Here, at this 0 Degree point, you can see that the microphone has its highest gain, which in this case is -11dB. As the microphone turns to its side, away from the sound source, the gain that it picks up begins to decrease. The 180 Degree reference point is when the microphone is facing completely away from the sound source, pointing in the opposite direction. Here, at this position, is where the gain of the microphone is the lowest, which in this case is -28dB. These gain responses of a shotgun microphone illustrate that it picks up sound with high gain only when it points directly to the sound source and decreases when rotated to its side.

The advantage of shotgun microphones is they focus directly on the sound source in front and pick up the sound with high gain, while recording any other noises present in the environment very low, if at all, that may be to the sides or rear. This is advantageous because it can pick up the sound only that the user desires, directly in front, while disregarding any other unwanted sounds that may be present in the environment. Therefore, shotgun microphones are highly used in applications where only the sound directly in front of the microphone is to be recorded so that all other noises will be reduced and the sound source is in a fixed position, directly in front of the shotgun microphone, and doesn't move much.