Advice for buying a mic

J

Joza

New member
Hey there!

I would like to try to sing a few songs of mine, mostly just for my own fun. But right now the only "mic" i have is a headset meant for internet calls.. :rolleyes: So I am pretty sure I should invest some money to a new mic. :D

However, I dont want to invest much, as my voice wouldn't sound great even with the best mic in the world, so I would rather choose a relatively low price tag and "ok"-quality. Something in the range of 100€ would sound reasonable to me.

I dont really know anything about the mics and differences they have, so its hard to say what properties I would want from it. Based on the recordings with my previous, eh.. mic and also just listening to my nonrecorded voice I would guess that a mic that would cut some sibilance would be good. When I need to cut a lot of sibilance from vocals in mixing stage I seem to always end up with very unnatural sound, so it would be beter if I didnt have to do that much in that stage.

Hmm.. Oh and though it will be primarily for singing, it would be nice if the same mic could be used to recording also acoustic guitar for example (to some extent). I have no idea if its possible at all, I just hope it is. :rolleyes:

I guess that I would connect it to my Edirol UA-1EX usb audio interface. It has a mic input jack and in manual it says:
Mic input jack (plug-in powered mic)
Connect a miniature condenser microphone that is designed for connection to a computer or other device that will supply power to the microphone. This jack provides a 3.3 V power supply.

* You must use a monaural microphone that is designed for plug-in power.
Click to expand...
Though of course it will be ok too if it has a usb connection by it self.

I guess thats pretty much all. So if you could point out some specific examples that you think would suit my needs for example on thomanns website http://www.thomann.de/index.html?partner_id=97926&page=gb/index.html, I would be very grateful. :)
 
SM 58? AT2020? There are a lot of options. The best way would be to try as many as you can. Have you tried anything that you liked? Looked up what your favorite artists use?
 
sm58 is the way to go. i use the sm for singing and the shure beta 58a to record my rap vocals.

love both but prefer the 58a by a bit. either way you go, you'll get a great mic.
 
Thanks for the replies! There really are a lot of option. I found out that those "phantom powers" that ive heard talking about here are not actually as expensive as they sound like. Seems like you can get one with ~50e. So I am now also concidering T.Bone SC400 along with the sm58.
 
The SM58 is a very good mic, but the first question here would be dynamic or condensor? Since you mentioned acoustic guitars, i think you might prefer a condensor mic. Condensors are generally more 'fragile', they pick up more sound, they sound a bit brighter, and are good for vocals and acoustic guitars too. You might want a large diaphragm condensor mic. You mentioned phantom power. Condensor mics need 48V phantom power to function, unlike dynamic mics. This can be provided by
1.Mixers
2.Audio interfaces
3.Pre Amps

And, ofcourse, try to actually test as many mics as you can before making a decision.
 
PhilGood said:
Or...you could ask this question...in the microphone forum.:D;)
Click to expand...

Hah, I know you guys have enough knowledge about this for what I need so I dont really want to register to the billionth forum just for that, though I guess one might even exist.:rolleyes:
 
Ok, need some help again. :)

I got a T. Bone SC400 mic and some low price preamp from behringer. Currently I have of course mic pluged into amp but then it goes straight into computers mic input and the audio card is just something which came with the computer. Is this ok or absolute no no? I am sure that the audio card isnt high quality but does it matter?

I have usb audio interface (edirol UA-1EX) but I dont want to connect my mic to it, because then I would have to also plug my headphones to it to be able to monitor, and then I couldn't control the volume of my studio monitors and headphones separately from the computer anymore.

So is it ok to connect the mic to the computer or do I need a second usb audio interface (so that other one has mic+headphones and the other has monitors)?

Possibly more questions following after answers for these. Thanks in advance!
 
I think you'll get better results from using your interface, but if you like what you're getting by doing what you're doing, good for you! Don't try two interfaces together unless you can attach them both to an external word clock to make sure they play well together - getting into some big nickel at that point - almost certainly better to go to a single bigger/better interface with all the features you want. I don't know that Edirol interface, but most of them have some way (in the accompanying software sometimes) to let you control the monitors and headphones separately - I wouldn't give up on it without a lot of effort at discovering everything it's got going on.

BTW, the microphone forum isn't in another place - just scroll down the front page a bit to the equipment section. There's also one for computers/digital recording a couple of spots down from this one - lots of good info in both, and no need to re-register.
 
Yeah I noticed the other forum afterwards. Moderators can move this one there if they want. I decided not to make a new topic for this last thing.

Hmm okay.. I tried using my interface some time ago but got awfull noise when I pluged it into the mic input. Propably it is ment for dynamic mics? It says that it "provides 3,3V power supply" and "You must use a monaural microphone that is designed for plug-in power." Then there are two normal inputs but I think they are RCA and I dont have RCA connector available right now. Do you think it should work with the mic input? Should I try to find out if there was something else wrong?

Im not really happy with the sound yet but Im a noobie so I cant really tell is it just the computer making noise, the sound card, wrong type of cords (I've heard something about balanced and unbalanced cords, what are they?), wrong mic placement, just my voice being awfull or whatever.:confused:
 
If you're running your mic through some sort of external preamp, you need to go to the LINE IN (not mic in) on your computer.
 
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