M AUDIO DUO & SAMSON MIC

[willythekid]

Hi,
I have an M-Audio Duo that i bought some years ago. It has worked fine with my dynamic Sure mics but then i tried it with a Samson co3 condenser mic - help, it sounded horrible! Extremely noisy and hummy and I don't know what. Maybe "radio interferance?" My friend uses a Mackie mixerboard that he plugs straight into the computers unbalanced inputs and he got excellent results with the same Samson mic.

Now I'm about to get some new gear and set up a studio but I don't know if I can trust M-Audios products. Maybe the mic preamps are not good enough? I would love to have the Mackie Onyx mixerboard with firewire output but it seems a little bit too expensive (and I really just need 2 mic preamps anyway). Any tips on a good mic preamp & A/D converter that is better than M-Audio?
/Best Regards WTK

[Scrubucket7]

The samson co3 is a noisy mic, i dont know that its the m-audio pres. I dont have experience with either though, so take what im saying as regurgatated opinions, but i have heard very good things about m-audio pres, and not so much about the samson mics.

[willythekid]

thanks for your input. looking around in the forum i see most people dissing the samson mic. So maybe I should start by finding a decent microphone, and then check if I need another preamp or not.

/wtk

[Getaway Driver]

Studio Projects C1 is a great mic for $199. I have had one for 3 years... love it.