Top 5 Best USB Microphones Under $100

gezeus

New member
Hi I'm Gezeus Quiryst and I'm a singer and mixer for the anime and vocaloid community and sometimes sing western songs. I want to share these budget microphones with the best quality out there.

I have listed the top 5 professional sounding microphones. The ATR2500 is my current microphone. Here's an example of my cover using ATR2500 with no audio processing besides reverb. Here: bit.ly/2NdISaS

USB mics are plug&record and best for home recording with no other equipments involved besides a pc/laptop.

Here is the list of the mics: bit.ly/2oG9C5Q

If you want more info about these microphones or other suggestions for cheaper or pricier microphones just reply here and I'll answer as soon as I can. Hope this helps my co-singers and co-mixers!
 
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It would, if you gave some examples of why you picked them and why you think they are excellent. Some of your comments makes little sense.
-Rich and bright sound
-Pretty decent build quality
-Provides EVERYTHING you need to record

-Good sound isolation

Rich, or bright? both is very rare, pretty decent build quality suggests some of it isn't? What is bad? Provides everything you need to record? Really? Sorry but USB mics have a pretty HUGE limitation. You cannot record stereo, as very few computers can record from two USB sources at the same time and this is a major flaw of USB mics. Great for people who only ever want to record one thing at a time, but plenty of people find two simultaneous inputs limiting, and of course USB mics get overloaded very quickly because the gain is set in the mic - so very quiet or very loud sounds cause grief.

You have listed 5 budget mics. What exactly is "professional sounding"? I could name quite a few USB mics not on your list, so this is just your favourite list, and may be somebody else nightmare. On this forum you will find hundreds of topics on budget mics - some good and positive, explaining their unique features, and some mostly ignored because they just say - here are the best mics under $100, but what does 'best' mean? Best for you, best for me? Personally, I have used the Samson mic, and hated it, yet quite like the XLR versions. The AT, for me is much too bright. What do you mean when you say it has good sound isolation? Sound isolation from mechanical noise, sound isolation from deep nulls in the cardioid response different to the other similar ones?

I'm very sorry but the link to the video confused me - the voice is quite deep in the mix, and the genre doesn't let me hear what it's doing - sounds a bit thin to me?
 
Oof I'm sorry if it was misleading and thank you for your insight. This was targeted for people that don't want to dive into details and/or technicalities of microphones.

"Want to record and have an audio that sounds professional but don’t want to get into the technical stuff about mic frequencies, audio interfaces, and whatnot?"

Basically the descriptions of them are more based on feel and sound of it and not for example the high end has a lot of boost etc. in which generally most aspiring 'just' singers/podcasters/gamers/live streamers wouldn't actually care about technicalities or wouldn't be able to understand those things. Unless they do want to know the details and/or they already do know about microphone technicalities then my link wouldn't be for these people 'yet'

"If you want more info about these microphones or other suggestions for cheaper or pricier microphones just reply here and I'll answer as soon as I can."

'yet' because I plan on reviewing each microphones for more in depth details

I showed an example of non-processed(w/reverb) sample of atr2500 so people would be the one to tell if they like how the mic picks up the vocals.

Thank you for the feedback dude! <3
 
USB mics have their uses and place* but in the general operation of a "Home Recording" studio they are, as Rob has said, very limiting.

The fact is, when people decide they would like to record some music they quite naturally jump straight for the "front end". "Ooo! Look! I just plug this into my USB port and I am a Produceha!"

Sound capture systems start at the OUTPUT. You need to have a good system of LISTENING to the recordings you make and have total control of that "monitoring" chain. Few USB mics have a monitoring output and so you are forced to rely on the internal computer sound card and in most cases and several ways these are ***t!

Even those mic that have headphone outs are I suspect pretty limited on quality and especially latency?

The basic requirement for anyone who is in the least bit serious about making decent music recordings is an Audio Interface with TWO microphone inputs and separate outputs and controls for "line out"(to monitors) and headphones. Yes, people come here with less but their work will always be a struggle and a compromise.

Giving information about USB mics is a laudable aim (how do you get access BTW?) but to be useful the tests should be with the mic in a fixed position, in the same room, and the same speaker each time at a fixed distance and speech, not singning is the best test.

*My son lives in France and has sent me some Bach he has done on classical guitar. He used a USB mic because it is all he had (dad sent it!). But! He has had 30 years experience of recording at home with a motley collection of gear and, although NOT technical, has gained an intrinsic skill at making the best of bad kit!

Dave.
 
I agree with both of you rob and dave, they are very limiting but let's try not to kinda ignore their potential. As a mixer specializing on vocals, I've worked on different vocals with with different mics with different genres in a mix. In this preview I'm gonna show, I've worked on 6 vocals on 6 different mics(including me in it). When I worked with this group, the guy with the most expensive mic(with really good reviews) in our group had a legit recording studio, some of us had only home recording studios and the rest were just pc/laptop, closet/unprofessional treated room, and a usb mic. bit.ly/2IlUNxj (with inst.) and bit.ly/2Nurqii (acapella). This cover was an entry for a competition over 100 groups ranging from 6-12 members per group and our entry ranked 1st place.

EASIEST TO HARDEST TO MIX:
1. Around $129: AT2020USB - amzn.to/2CNWllM
2. Around $99: Shure SM58- amzn.to/2O3TZA5
3. Around $120: Blue Yeti - amzn.to/2N2t6Ab
4. Around $79: ATR2500 - amzn.to/2Nbszva
5. Around $59: MXL Tempo - amzn.to/2LUebT6
6. Around $250: T Bone SCT 800 - bit.ly/2O4RAFs

I'm sorry I haven't wrote down any detailed info of each mics that I presented earlier but I will as soon as I have free time. Thank you for the feedback <3
 
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I simply don't understand what it is you are trying to do. I have never considered any microphone harder to mix than another? Microphones just have 'character'? Is that a good description - I don't know. The SM58, for example. It's a mic that works pretty well on almost anything. I don't think it excels at anything, but when you don't know, you do know it won't do a job badly. I've never used the At 202, but there's an XLR version in my studio sitting on the top of a rack where it got left a couple of months ago - it was swapped for something a little more warm. I find it just too hard a sound and difficult to eq into something nicer. I had a sample of the same mic as the Thomann 800 direct from the Chinese factory, and really liked it. Very warm and friendly - but you put it at number 6? I found it blended really nicely - especially good on saxophones! Maybe you are looking at a sound that cuts through? I really don't know.

What I do know is that microphone reviews are the most subjective reviews we read because we're all listening to different things. If you look at the specs for mics, has anyone ever found they helped one jot in predicting the sound. My hearing now has nothing above 14500Hz - nothing at all! so 15-20KHz is meaningly in any comments I make on a mic. I suspect most people are more similar to me, than different to me. About 8 years ago, I got a sample of a USB mic with the volume knob on, that's so similar to the AT that I suspect it's the same mic, and that sounds quite pleasant - but I had endless grief with drivers for it, and getting the headphone to work reliably never worked for me. Your strange a Capella recording sounds nice - but that's skill in the mix, and the mic type is probably irrelevant to a mix like that.
 
I'm not saying that the quality gets worse as it goes down to 6. SCT 800 can be mixed without doing too much eq on it but that's where it's limited, it can only be 'warm' and 'friendly' somehow like mxl tempo on specific genres. My point of describing how the mic sound by feel and not by technicalities is for nonmixer singers to choose from them and use them on their default frequency without dealing with equalization. Like for example I can make a terrible sounding mic with a wide frequency response sound like $1000+ if there were, but will always be terrible to use on default because of how it picks up frequencies.

Mic types are relevant. USB, XLR, difference in frequency response, these things are relevant to what people want to achieve in recording but a lot of people don't go into details so I'm giving them the option to understand it better in a more layman's term and choose from them.

The reason why SCT 800 was the hardest to mix was because the mic is a very mid range freq microphone(why it has a warm and friendly feel which is more of a layman's term) and doesn't have much high end and just decent low end which is really great for live shows, recording generally warm sounding songs etc. It is a very specific mic in terms of genre and use and has to be eq'd HARD to fit the song and the rest of the vocalists from my example. Mixing vocals need to blend(even if they don't irl), need to sound they sang in 1 microphone(even if they have different ones), and vocals mixed should be very hard to differentiate from each other when singing in a group. Matching the eq of the mic to everything else including instrumentals for them to blend well is why a really good BUT specific for warm kind of genre mic like SCT 800 was so hard to mix.

Shure SM58 is like an all around mic, I agree it can never go wrong. It can be eq'd to almost any genre I would like to with ease but it's an xlr mic which will need an audio interface which is also around $150, so basically the whole set up for an xlr mic to work on computers is always +$150 and then whichever mic, in this case $99 = $249 and the people wanting to invest on that needs to really look them up.

tl;dr I described the USB mics for non-technical people in a more layman's term so they wouldn't go through any kind of hassle of learning technical stuff about them and wants to buy the cheapest with really good quality depending on how they would want to use them on.
 
I'm not sure you can describe mics like this. Mics are not a "very mid range freq microphone". The response plots, the only objective evidence rarely show what a mic will sound like. The differences between one and another might be a small boost at X frequency, but to the ear, there is far more to it - but do you have the vocabulary to actually give people details they can rely on? I doubt I have. Different source, different mic, listened to on your speakers, in your room. I have never been able to buy any mic based on somebody else's subjective opinion. Like - this mic is warm sounding, so you buy one and discover on your already low voice, it sounds dark and murky - or like my favourite vocal mic for ME - the Shure SM86, you tell somebody to get one because it has clarity and presence and then discover the things that make it work for me make it sound dreadful on somebody with a higher voice. The real test of course is to do a blind test and see if you can always spot which is which. This one is the X, this one is the Y. I know which of my mics is likely to work on a certain sound, but rarely does eq let me down - so I can use any of them for most sources. How will you make your reviews and recommendations objective, and not subjective? It will be difficult. I've got a few of those $20 condensers that were doing the rounds on Ebay a while back - and they're actually quite pleasant for a bright sounding mic.
 
Like Rob, I think this is an exercise in futility. The advice given in HR and other audio forums is that you really need to test a mic on the voice that will be using it.

What would be quite useful is a check of the USB mic range against published specification. For this you would need a VERY quiet room (or a big, well insulated box!) to give a figure for self noise then some form of precision sound generator* to check sensitivity. A blast of pink noise could be used to give a reasonable idea of on-axis response.

*That could be a very well specified monitor such as one of the tiny co-incident Genelecs.

The "Tooob" abounds with so called "night and day" tests of amplifiers, guitar speakers, "cryo" valves and other such paraphernalia. None that I have ever seen are ever done under controlled conditions and HEAVEN FORFEND we should get a before and after voltage table in the case of valves!

Dave.
 
I agree with both of you but the thing is most singers, podcasters, streamers, gamers, etc. won't actually try to understand response plots and the only way that they can actually understand it is to buy it and test it out for themselves or go to a local shop and test it there in which I think would be too much of a work to most of these people and/or they could be potentially wasting money to test it out first if ever they bought them online without understanding the specs of it. The only way is to show my experience as a mixer, as a singer, with proof of actually being legit good on both, etc. so that these people won't have to go through all the technical stuff and buy and test them out personally. They can always research them up if they want a more solid proof that it will be good for them but my guide is for the ones that don't want to. Let's face the fact that a lot of people are lazy and/or doesn't have much capabilities to understand technicalities and just wanna dive into just using a good mic.

I do understand the point of when it's a warm sounding mic and they already have a low voice it would sound dark and murky and same for the clear bright mic with high voice. This will be their choice if they want to complement the mic with their voice or not. For a guy like me that has a really wide range almost 4 octaves and constantly changes vocal tones, this won't apply on me, I will have to choose a mic that is really flat on the freq response and maybe the only descriptive layman's term on a mic like that would be good for wide ranged vocalists.

I have a sample of a low and dark kind of mix and a more mid range to high end range kind of mix in which would never work for an ATR2500 on default without eq'ing because it's originally a bright sounding mic. bit.ly/2N90ANa <<< I'm the guy singing with low and kinda dark vocal tone(this was also for a competition and ranked first), and bit.ly/2Mq4kVH <<< still me with radioesque, warm, mid rangey mix and high pitch vocals at the end of the song, in which mxl tempo, or sct800 would've been good choices for songs like these with little eq'ing

They can't be describe like that if people do know how it's supposed to be described but nontech people wouldn't be able to understand. I do understand for people like us, this kind of 'list' makes no sense because we know which is which and wouldn't have value for us unless shown the specs

tl;dr people that don't want to buy and test them out and/or don't want to go to a local store to try them out and/or people who don't want to go through technical stuff, especially people without any experience with these things should buy at their own risk with the nontech layman information I gave them.
 
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If you really want to educate podcasters, tell them not to buy USB mics in the first place. Tell them to get an affordable 2 channel audio interface.

That will allow them to compare two mics to see if they adapt well to their voice.

If they then get something like a Neewer 700 and a Behringer B5, they have three cases to compare: the dirt cheap Neewer that pretends to be an LDC and the B5 SDC in omni and cardio. In doing that, they'll learn something. Start out with an expensive mic and the only thing they'll learn is if that particular mic adapts to their voice and room, or not.

In my view, there are no bad mics and no better mics. It all depends on what you're trying to record and how much experience you have. And the room, of course. A beginner with the best gear won't make better recordings than the same beginner with mediocre gear.

I see podcasters trying to use an expensive shotgun like a Sennheiser MKH416 and not getting decent results. It isn't wise to use an MKH416 for speech in a very small space like most gamers seem to have. The same goes for the much heralded SM7b. That's a great mic for experienced recordists with the preamp to match. It's a waste of money for a beginner with an average preamp and will likely result in demotivation.
 
Again, the point of the budget USB mics are plug&record without any technicalities and for people that just want to start with low budget whether it would be gaming, live streaming, singing, podcasting, etc. Getting an audio interface already cost around $100 dollars and plus the XLR mic wouldn't be under 100$ unless well they bought both secondhand then probably yeah but that's not my point in giving info about under $100 USB mics.

Thank you for the info though. In case people want to check them out again here it is. bit.ly/2oG9C5Q
 
Again, the point of the budget USB mics are plug&record without any technicalities and for people that just want to start with low budget whether it would be gaming, live streaming, singing, podcasting, etc. Getting an audio interface already cost around $100 dollars and plus the XLR mic wouldn't be under 100$ unless well they bought both secondhand then probably yeah but that's not my point in giving info about under $100 USB mics.

Thank you for the info though. In case people want to check them out again here it is. bit.ly/2oG9C5Q

A behringer U-Phoria UMC202HD is 60 €.
A Superlux E205 is 38 €

Both are far better than most USB mics.

Note that these are just examples. There's plenty of others in that price range when it comes to mics. A behringer B5 is currently 50 €, but that's a blowout. Interfaces aren't as plenty, I'm afraid, but the Behringer is perfectly adequate.

The biggest error here is that USB microphones are plug and play. Some are, combined with some computers. A lot of them exhibit USB-whine. Just check the Audacity forum and search for the Blue Microphones' Yeti. A lot of people can't get them to work without a lot of noise. I's not that the Yeti is a bad mic; it's just that there are several different USB mics called "Yeti" and that the cheaper ones seem to lack filtering on the USB power.

The same problem could surface with an audio interface that's USB bus powered. At least with interfaces, you have the choice. I haven't seen a USB mic with external power yet.

Most USB mics also don't offer a way to monitor the signal and some don't even have a gain control, making them useless for any serious recording. It's not impossible to make a USB mic, it's just a lot harder than making a decent interface. And it's certainly not possible for less than 100$.

The only mic on your list that I've heard, is Behringer C1U. And that's not a mic I would consider worth it's money, or professional.

If you want to avoid all technicalities, use the built-in mic on your laptop. Some of these are pretty decent too and you don't need to spend any money.
 
I generally agree with Cyrano*. Now, if folks want cheap there is a microphones around that goes under various names but I have bought two designated "BM-800". These are largish, side address LDC (but the capsule is only some 20mm and an electret) The build quality and finish is quite remarkable for the £20 or so asking price.

They are NOT USB mics. They come with an XLR to "stereo" 3.5mm jack plug cable and work from the polarizing voltage present on the mic jack of a laptop's sound card and my two worked remarkably well.
You are of course at the mercy of the quality of the internal soundcard but the one in this g6 HP i3 laptop is pretty good. Windows of course has internal gain setting so that is an immediate advantage over a USB mic.

The mics can also be used with a conventional XLR cables and an AI with 48V and so the mic seems to me a better bet than most low cost USB mics at least.

I shall dig my BM out and give you all the benefit of my croaking.

*My limited investigations have shown me that the "USB" whine is not due to dirty USB power and is in fact inherent in SOME 16bit converters or/and a Windows anomaly.

Dave.
 
Oof I don't agree with the laptop mics and xlr to 3.5mm jack. The only ones I can agree on and recommend are USB mics and XLR mics with interface but again my main focus is on USB mics with the premise of it being under $100.

For laptop mics, people don't know where to speak on the laptop, the mic is built in near the cooling/fan system of laptops and is louder than any background noise any mics can have, even for non technical people they would know this. Distance is also a huge issue, the farther you are from the mic the more hollow you sound and if you tried going near your laptop for better proximity, well good luck to the person's face and eyes with the laptop screen so close to their head. Like seriously how can you do gaming with a camera, singing while looking at lyrics, podcasting while reading scripts? Unless again you want really bad quality audio due to proximity issues. I would never recommend laptop mics.

For xlr to 3.5mm jack, there just isn't enough to power up an xlr microphone with just a 3.5mm jack. I've personally tried it out and a really good quality xlr microphone sounded like a crappy headphones mic using the 3.5mm jack. It's an xlr for a reason and needs an interface for a reason.
 
"For xlr to 3.5mm jack, there just isn't enough to power up an xlr microphone with just a 3.5mm jack. I've personally tried it out and a really good quality xlr microphone sounded like a crappy headphones mic using the 3.5mm jack. It's an xlr for a reason and needs an interface for a reason."

As Bugs said "He don't know me very well, DO he?" Did you read the part where I said the BM-800 uses and ELCTERET capsule? The rest of the circuit needs miniscule power for the impedance converter.
I might be old and very deaf but I do know a bit about electronics.

Will post my croakings later.
Dave.
 
As promised, me.
The room is my living room , about 70cu mtrs and well carpeted sofa, easy chair and heavy curtains plus a lot of junk, in short, pretty dead.

One recording is at a measured 100mm from cake hole and Win sound set for 100% rec level plus 10% boost.

The "close" recording has the levels set down to 80% and no boost. The noise floors are about -55dBFS and -67dBfs and the latter especially I think is very acceptable? A decent singer could have another 6dB less gain and a correspondingly better noise floor. This was done at 11pm, just me in the room and it was a very quiet night.

I noticed there was little "proximity effect" from close (lips touching foam gag) talking and so I thinks the electret cell is very near an Omni? Even so, for 20 quid I really think the mics are surprisingly good.

But. I have read several threads where people have bought a BM or one of its variants and had various problems. The low cost it seems is paid for in very poor QC.

Dave.
 

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We're hedging around the basic premise here. If you are serious about recording, you don't buy a USB mic. You have a closed system. You cannot do an interview, you cannot record stereo, you cannot record a singer with an acoustic guitar - all very common basic stuff. A subjective, rather than objective review really doesn't help a buyer. If they cannot read a frequency response chart, or understand a polar diagram, what makes you think they understand how to set levels and minimise noise?

A mic with a standard XLR is so much more versatile for the one mic beginner of the keen amateur who wants to be able to do a bit more. Those mics mentioned - those 800s, I too bought a couple and they're surprisingly good. They do what has been said. Phantom power with XLR-XLR or work fine using a 3.5mm laptop polarising voltage. I'd rather buy one of these than waste my money on a USB mic that has far too many limitations. I just don't see the point in the idea of a shootout of low potential items that can only say this one is warm, this one is harsh, this one is noisy, this one I like - when the purchaser might find the very opposite.

It's up to you, it's your time - but I'm just very unsure what to make of this kind of non-technical review. If you can collect mics for review free of charge from suppliers, that could be good - but you need a balanced range, and I'm not sure this list is that balanced really.
 
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