James Stone wrote:
On Tue, Jan 02, 2007 at 12:11:59PM -0800, st wrote:
The Samson C01U seems to get some variable reviews though..
This may work well for you, since you are on a budget, but
I wouldn't recommend it for the long run. You would be
buying a Microphone, preamp and USB audio interface all at
once, and *when* you decide that you want to upgrade one of
those features, you will have to do them all at the same time.
The Soundblaster line input is fine for recording. Don't
even consider the mic input. It is too noisy. Unfortunately
you are looking at about $200 for a low cost preamp and
large-diaphragm condenser, which is out of your price range,
but would really give you a nice sound, even with the soundblaster
line in. Later, you will find out that the mic pre is too noisy,
so you will spend more on a better one, then you will find out that
the mic itself is generating quite a bit of noise (not dynamic of course,
but they expose more preamp noise due to gain requirements) so
you will upgrade that. Finally, you may want to upgrade the sound
card because it will become evident that the soundblaster has
an annoying limiter built in that makes it tough to overload the
digital signal, but does squash the loud parts of the signal,
changing the sound without your permission.
Thanks for all the input everyone!
I have plumped for a Samson C03 and a Behringer minimic 800
preamp (the tube MP sounded like it was somewhat delicate and
fairly unreliable from a breaking down point of view from the
reviews I read..).. For headphones I decided to get some
Audio-Technica ATHM30.. Sounds like they should be adequate to my
requirements..
Great.
OTOH, obtaining a mixer will give you a bit more functionality when you
want to add more external sound outputs (like CD player, etc.) to your
PC. You can get some inexpensive ones that already have mic preamps and
phantom.
So fingers crossed it will all work..
One last thing.. I was puzzling how to connect the mono output
from the preamp to the stereo line-in on the sound card. In the
end I bought a dual mono 1/4" to stereo 1/8" jack lead. This
seems most sensible to me, though I was wondering if a straight
stereo-stereo would have worked??
Think of the audio input as 2 channel input, not stereo. Connect line
out of preamp to one of the channel inputs.
