Samson Meteor or Blue Snowball?

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TCLow

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Currently choosing between samson meteor and blue snowball microphone, kindly any suggestion or advice to select between this two?
 
What are you planning to use them for; vocals or podcasting or voice over stuff? for podcasting and voice over stuff either should be fine, but if it's for vocals/rapping/acoustic guitar/more traditional recording stuff, then i'd say hold off, save a bit more money and look at getting a separate USB interface and mic

i've not tried either but have heard a lot of podcast stuff done on the blue snowball and have been pleasantly surprised, although the Blue Yeti Pro seems to have more to it.
 
Hmmm... i do think of saving up more for interface and mic, but just i'm still pursuing study, and won't have much money in short, so just want to record some piano pieces, budjet only around 70USD... and i found a meteor and snowball both in my budjet, so just think of choosing one of them... any recommendation?
 
Digital Audio Workstation - basically software used to record/edit audio on a computer, examples are things like Reaper, Cubase, Logic, Pro Tools, Sonar, Studio One etc. if you've not gone one/not got one in mind i'd suggest looking at Reaper as the free trial is 30 days and the full licence is only $40 and will do pretty much everything that all the others will for a fraction of the price.

Is it just an upright piano you plan on recording or digital piano through an amp/line output?

I do completely appreciate the joys of being a cash strapped student but in terms of quality over cost there are other avenues i'd explore before purely going down the USB mic route, especially for recording piano which has such a wide frequency range. the benefit of having a separate preamp & convertor (which is basically a stripped down interface anyway) and a separate mic means you're not limited to one product. one of the big complaints about all in one USB mics is that if you don't like the mic you have to replace everything in order to get a different mic, whereas with separate parts you can easily replace just the mic or just the interface. one of the other problems that some people come across are the length of USB cables, whereas with a separate interface and mic you can run a pretty long usb cable from the computer to the interface and then a pretty long XLR cable from the interface to the mic.

As a cheap and sturdy preamp and A/D convertor the Blue Icicle is great and only £40 (sorry, uk based, $'s mean nothing to me) and in terms of mic's things like the MXL 990, sE X1, Shure SM57, Blue Encore 100 are all dirt cheap and very usable, although for piano recording i'd look more towards condenser mic's over dynamic mic's as they tend to have more sensitivity, although any of the four i've mentioned would wield good results.

If you really can't stretch or save and really just want to get on with recording, which is completely fair enough, then out of the usb mic range the Blue Snowball, Blue Yeti and AKG Perception 120 usb are all ok, but it can end up being a false economy if you find that they don't sound as good as you'd like as you find yourself buying more gear to replace it rather than just adding gear to upgrade it
 
I see, appreciate it =) well, I'm neither dollar based or pound based, i'm RM based (if you know what's it) ;) which means your currency means about 5 times bigger... so i'll take all into consideration, thanks a lot =D
 
I understand that condenser microphone require phantom power right? is it every preamp and A/D convertor provide the phantom power as well? ( not really understand how is the phantom power connection, just heard bout it )
 
:laughings: ahh the joys of an international website and different worldwide currencies. i hope at least the prices are the same ball park in terms of conversion as i know there was a chap from india on here asking about sm58's and they worked out at double the price in his neck of the woods because of import and taxes etc. i did have to goole RM and it came up as Malaysia.... is that right or is google lying to me again? (it does that every now and then but mainly with directions)

Phantom Power is used to power condenser mic's, and is usually supplied via the preamp and sent down the same standard XLR cable that connects the mic to the preamp (by standard XLR i mean Male XLR to Femal XLR cable). the convertor side simply converts the analogue signal from the mic into a digital signal that the computer can read. most interfaces and preamps provide phantom power, but i'd say always check first as there are still some floating around that don't. all the ones i suggested earlier, including the blue icicle, do and i've not seen one in a long time that doesn't but they still exist so just make sure if you go down the interface and condenser mic route. you don't need phantom power for dynamic mics (except for a handful of very special and rare cases) and phantom power can damage ribbon mics (again, apart from a select few who make a big deal about their phantom powered ribbon mics)

if you're intrigued or want to learn more about mic types and how they work i'd suggest googling them as there's some outstanding explanations around the internets :)
 
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haha... ya.. RM is the currency for Malaysia xD so when i mentioned budjet around 70USD actually is around RM 200 already >< well, google did a great job on translation as well (but obviously have so much space to improve ;) )

i see, about the ribbon mic i read on some web, stated not really suggested to use as it's fragile and.. erm.. not at the high-end quality?
another question if i use dynamic mic then use XLR to 6mm jack cable + 6mm to 3.5mm converter to record through computer mic jack, is it ok? i know it sounds noob ><

all right, i'll dig into it :D
 
yeah, ribbon mic's are very delicate. i wasn't recommending them, just trying to cover all my bases with my phantom power bit :) i also wouldn't say they're "not high quality" because, to me, ribbons sound gorgeous, but they certainly have a very distinct flavour to them. the sound and the fact they're so delicate doesn't make them as versatile as the majority of condenser or dynamic mic's.

um.... you can do the dynamic mic to xlr to 6mm to 3.5mm to mic input on your computer and it would just about work but i'd strongly recommend against it. firstly, the mic inputs on pc sound cards are not the best quality and are aimed much more at little headset mics for Skype call or gaming rather than full on recording. secondly, there is a risk of degrading the mic signal from going from a balanced xlr to 6mm jack to 3.5mm. it may be nothing, and if all the connections are balanced (google it) then you may be ok but i've been where you are and have done exactly this and the second i moved on to a stand alone interface i never looked back..... some times i still have the nightmares flash backs to this and me screaming "why's it so noisy!? why can't i hear anything!? why isn't it very loud!? ARRRRHRHRHHGGGAHH!!!!!!"

the USB mic's you were looking at to start with would be much, much better than this approach.
 
haha.. that's interesting~ thanks for everything =)

finally i just bought samson go mic on ebay with $48 on ebay, and that's what i can afford, hope it make me a good starting into recording field...
 
If I were to go with An USB microphone ... then why not just use the on board microphone that the computer comes with.
 
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