As someone else said, a usb mic at the very least has absolutely no chance of expandability, and you lose a lot of features of a separate mic and external preamp that will be paramount to the learning experience involved in home recording.
What kind of Behringer mic are you using at the moment?
I'd agree with most that the interface you can get for 150 bucks (or thereabouts) will make the biggest difference straight up. If you find a lot of people suggesting a particular firewird interface that is relatively cheap around here, pony up the 15 bucks and figure out how to install a PCI card in your desktop. Well worth it, I assure you.
Then, if you want (and the Behri is a dud for some reason), you can upgrade your mic. For now, I would focus on one piece at a time. Once you get the interface, start working with that and the mic you have. See what results you get. If everything is still terrible and you suspect the mic, come back here and search for entry level mic threads, and ask questions in that area.
I agree that the acoustic space makes a big difference, but using a good condenser, preamp, and DAT recording technology, I have recorded some very nice, balanced
acoustic guitar sounds in my untreated apartment. I threw up some mattresses in a corner and had the person recording face them for vocal and guitar recording, but it came out very good nonetheless.
This is all my opinion, mostly formulated from reading countless posts on this bbs over the last year or two, but if you are recording a noisy, clipped performance through your computer's stock soundcard microphone input, being in your bedroom is going to sound similar to running that same setup in a nice, pro room. There will be a difference, but probably not much. Upgrading your equipment at first, though, I think will get you to a place where you can be sufficiently content to start learning the software and space you have, and work around any limitations you may find.
As someone else said, a usb mic at the very least has absolutely no chance of expandability, and you lose a lot of features of a separate mic and external preamp that will be paramount to the learning experience involved in home recording.
What kind of Behringer mic are you using at the moment?
I'd agree with most that the interface you can get for 150 bucks (or thereabouts) will make the biggest difference straight up. If you find a lot of people suggesting a particular firewird interface that is relatively cheap around here, pony up the 15 bucks and figure out how to install a PCI card in your desktop. Well worth it, I assure you.
Then, if you want (and the Behri is a dud for some reason), you can upgrade your mic. For now, I would focus on one piece at a time. Once you get the interface, start working with that and the mic you have. See what results you get. If everything is still terrible and you suspect the mic, come back here and search for entry level mic threads, and ask questions in that area.
I agree that the acoustic space makes a big difference, but using a good condenser, preamp, and DAT recording technology, I have recorded some very nice, balanced
acoustic guitar sounds in my untreated apartment. I threw up some mattresses in a corner and had the person recording face them for vocal and guitar recording, but it came out very good nonetheless.
