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[Stephen Swaffer]

Many times speakers want a "sensitive" mic and ask for a condenser mic as they are more "sensitive".

In the grand scheme of things, since we usually have plenty of system gain, our limiting factor is acoustics and speaker placement with regards to feedback.  Can you, in fact, get better gain before feedback with a more sensitive mic?  What is the advantage of increased sensitivity?

[John Roberts {JR}]

No, sensitivity has little to do with it, one might argue that a more sensitive mic will not be placed as close to the talker, so will pick up more room noise proportionately, but in general it's only the total path gain that matters.

Mic pattern does matter. You want to selectively pick up the sound from the talker, and reject the sound from other sources like the speaker(s). 

JR

PS: The primary benefit of higher sensitivity mic, is better electrical S/N (more signal/same noise).

[Bob Leonard]

Sensitivity is not the factor as gain is gain. The dominant factor is the ability to reject stage wash, rear and side rejection, and the mic pattern. An example of good GBF and off axis rejection is the Heil PR-35, and even an SM-58 under the right circumstances.

[Ryan Grandusky]

As said above a microphones polar pattern (specifically rejection areas) plays a more important role in GBF than microphone sensitivity. JR is spot on with higher sensitivity can mean better signal to noise ratio so long as you don't exceed your microphones spl capabilities.

[Corey Scogin]

It may be important to note that polar pattern varies across the frequency spectrum just like the coverage angle of a speaker. 

[Don Boomer]

Mic pattern does matter. You want to selectively pick up the sound from the talker, and reject the sound from other sources like the speaker(s). 

Agreed ... but if you are playing in smaller venues there will get to be a point where the reflection off the back wall back into the mic will trump just about everything else.

btw ... anyone ever run into a "standard" for measuring GBF?

[g'bye, Dick Rees]

anyone ever run into a "standard" for measuring GBF?

I think it falls under the heading "Pass/Fail"...

[John Roberts {JR}]

Agreed ... but if you are playing in smaller venues there will get to be a point where the reflection off the back wall back into the mic will trump just about everything else.

btw ... anyone ever run into a "standard" for measuring GBF?

I never heard of one and IMO that's just as well, because any hard standard would be based on fixing some variables that may not be fixed in the real world applications, so any resulting metric would just be another number for mic manufacturers to chase. That said it is probably possible to come up with rough GBF differences between different polar patterns. 

There is a reason IMO that the popular vocal microphones are so entrenched, perhaps because monitor speaker designers, use those defacto standard "vocal" mics to tweak their monitor speaker designs for low feedback susceptibility.... or not.

Of course what would I know (that's how I'd do it). 

JR

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