These are the two polar patterns The Snowball is capable of producing. If you think of polar patterns as the shape of the area that a microphone "hears" omnidirectional hears everything at equal volume from all angles (in a 360 degree sphere surrounding the mic), while cardioid only hears what's right in front of it at full volume and other sounds at increasingly diminished volume as the sound source moves further away from the center of the mic (audio techs call this off-axis). You should care because one of the most useful features of a microphone is the ability to control its pickup. We like polar patterns so much, that some of our professional studio microphones have as many as nine different patterns! With The Snowball, BLUE has given you the two most likely to be useful to you.