Should I Buy a USB Microphone?

Wouldn't system resource usage be a consideration as well? It should be higher for USB.

Higher than the overhead of a well-written FireWire audio interface driver that uses DCL programs to offload most of the heavy lifting? You bet.

Higher than the overhead of a PCI audio interface driver? Maybe, leaning towards yes.

Higher than the overhead of a poorly written FireWire audio interface driver that does everything on the CPU? Probably not.

On average? Probably.
 
Or, put another way, the system resource use for USB is almost certainly a bit higher than a well-written Firewire interface, most likely higher than a PCI interface and "meh" regards to some of the poorly written stuff out there. However, you need only look at how many USB interfaces are chugging away happily out there with up to 16 tracks to see that it's simply not a real-world problem.
 
USB microphones can be very useful in a setting which demands easy access and straight up and down recording.
They do create a different 'flavour' to your conventional XLR microphone but are very useful, especially fi you are podcasting or on a really low budget and want to put it 'straight in' you computer.
Like everything Audio, some are better than others and it is about budget and purpose.
There are some great USB microphones that wont break the bank or eat up your ram/processing power too. :)
 
I appreciate your knowledge and information on this issue. I am on a budget and have, unfortunately, been impetuous by purchasing a USB microphone without proper research-my bad. I'm hoping that you can impart to me any information that will help me rectify the problem I am having with monitoring. Even when I'm straight, single channel recording without any playback tracks, I'm hearing nothing through from my speakers or headphones. I've used various DAW software with no success. I don't know what to do? I would appreciate your help-thanx.
 
I appreciate your knowledge and information on this issue. I am on a budget and have, unfortunately, been impetuous by purchasing a USB microphone without proper research-my bad. I'm hoping that you can impart to me any information that will help me rectify the problem I am having with monitoring. Even when I'm straight, single channel recording without any playback tracks, I'm hearing nothing through from my speakers or headphones. I've used various DAW software with no success. I don't know what to do? I would appreciate your help-thanx.

It can be difficult (sometimes impossible) to get monitoring for work when using a USB mic. How well you can get things to work will depend on a mix of the DAW you're using and the audio drivers you have installed.

Some general guidelines would be that you have to get this set up in the appropriate menu on your DAW. You'll need to specify to the DAW that you want to use one device (the USB mic) as your record source and a second one (likely you inbuilt sound card) as the output.

This'll mean that (given the option) you have to USE MME drivers (on PC) or Core Audio (On Mac). ASIO drivers cannot handle more than one device at a time. The big downside is that MME drivers have a lot more latency than ASIO so, even if it works, you'll hear a lot of delay.

The only other thing is to check the set up on your DAW to make sure that it's feeding the output of your record track back the the main output. Many/most DAWs expect you to use direct monitoring and default to having this capability turned off. How to change it depends on the individual DAW.

Even with all these guidelines, I've heard of some DAWs that simply refuse to let you use two devices at once.

It's not true that you can't monitor using a usb mic, as long as you have an interface.

See the above but why would you have a USB mic if you have an external interface?
 
See the above but why would you have a USB mic if you have an external interface?

Well in my case, I bought my mic before I had an audio interface. But now that I have an audio interface I am fully capable of monitoring just as well as I could with an XLR mic. Which is part of the reason I haven't upgraded yet.
 
Probably not "as well" unless your system is very unusual.

Using a USB mic and an external interface will force you into MME drivers with higher latency than ASIO ones and forces you into listening to everything in a "round trip" mode via your computer and software. An XLR mic and suitable interface lets you use direct hardware monitoring so the signal doesn't have to go via the computer.

If it works for you, great--but most people find the extra latency involved to be very off-putting when tracking.
 
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