MXL-990 with phantom power 48v... what am I doing wrong?

[36chambers]

Yo

Any recommendations for an audio interface to use that isn't USB? Since I currently have an XLR to stereo jack cable, that'd save me having to buy an XLR to USB cable, which translates as a much easier and quicker (also a few dolla bills cheaper) process.

(That feel when you can't just buy all this equipment in one purchase.)

 

[36chambers]

Apologies, just realised that the Steinberg comes with a cable.

 

[Bobbsy]

I know you're happy to find that the Steinberg comes with a USB cable but I thought it might be useful to you if I gave a bit of background on what you're doing (and why you couldn't use any form of jack cable).

The output of your mic is an analogue signal...the sound waves in the air hit the mic and are converted into electrical waves that mirror (more or less) the sound with the electrical frequency varying with sound frequency and the voltage varying with the loudness of the signal. This is great if you're plugging into an analogue mixer but computers can't use an analogue signal. As with everything else a computer does, the signal from your mic has to be converted to a digital sample. Even if you plug a cheap mic directly into the jack socket on the computer, the analogue signal is going through a cheap and nasty chip that effectively does the same job as the Steinberg, just not nearly as well.

That's what you new audio interface will do...it samples the analogue mic signal and converts it to a form the computer can use. This digital signal is fed into the computer via USB. (There are other types of interface, including ones that plug into a desk top computer, firewire, thunderbird and so on but this are less common and won't save you any money.

Just FYI, the Steinberg also does the same in reverse--it takes the output digital signal from your computer and converts it to an analogue signal you can feed to headphones or a set of monitor speakers.

Hope this helps.