The optional SGH-6 shotgun capsule adds a professional-quality hyper-directional (that is, highly directional) microphone to the H6, making it the perfect audio recorder for anyone working in film, video or live theater, or for ENG (electronic news gathering) applications.

Thanks to the three internal mics with digital signal processing ability, the SGH-6 achieves a frequencyindependent super-cardioid polar pattern. Compared to ordinary shotgun microphones using an acoustic tube method, the SGH-6 maintains a highly directional pickup at about half the length.

Shotgun microphones are often used when you cannot position a microphone directly in front of a sound source. For example, if someone is speaking in front of a video camera and you don’t want them to hold an interview microphone up to their mouth, the solution is to use an off-screen shotgun mic.

However, shotgun mics are not the audio equivalent of a photographic telephoto lens. Even though they do an above-average job of picking up sounds that originate from a short distance away, they always sound better when they’re physically close to the sound source. If the capsule is more than three feet away, the audio will start to sound distant. The farther away it is, the more distant and reverberant the audio will become.

Note: The SGH-6 is a monaural microphone.