What USB mic should I get?

[RonenA]

I'm really sorry in advance if there already been threads on this, but I did do a search.

I wanna get a decent USB microphone for some home music recording. I'm gunna be recording mainly singing, maybe acoustic guitar or piano. Not looking for incredible quality, but better than my macbooks built in mic. :/ From my research, there seems to be 3 main companies to pick from - Audio Techinca, Samson and MXL. All of them have good reviews on amazon, all cost around the same. I have no idea which to get.

I was looking at these:
MXL USB.007 Stereo
MXL Studio1 USB
Audio Technica 2020 USB
Samson CO1U USB

Maybe you guys recommend one of these, maybe I should look at something else. Maybe its a better idea to go with an XLR mic and get an XLR to 1/8" adapter.

Also, I wanna get a mic stand, are there any other accessories that you guys recommend like a pop filter or something?

Thanks!

 

[antichef]

You'll be much happier if you get an interface and a normal (XLR) mic. The USB mic, no matter how good it is, is going to be a dead end, and you won't be able to record more than one track at a time. If you were to get a USB mic and then later get an interface, I'm fairly sure you'd find that you couldn't run them together due to clocking issues.

 

[AndrewClaycomb]

If I were you I would get a Blue Icicle (turns any mic into a usb mic) and an SM57. I don't know if you will be very satisfied over your built in condenser though.

 

[RonenA]

What do you mean by clocking issues?
And, if I'm not worried about recording tracks at the same time and wanna keep this as cheap as possible, which mic should I go with?

 

[AndrewClaycomb]

doesn't your mac already have some sort of audio card with a mic input? Just get an adapter and whatever cheap mic you can find if you aren't concerned with the sound. Nady and Behringer both make $10 dynamics.

 

[TimOBrien]

USB mics are mostly for people doing podcasts.

Start here instead:

http://www.tweakheadz.com/guide.htm

 

[guitar junkie]

I think the interface idea is one of the better ones out there really, though for me since I want to get out of the studio sometimes and just lay down an idea at random, I have been looking at a few units myself.

The BLUE Snowball is a USB mic that I have heard mixed recording quality from.

And then Samson has one called the G-Track which is a usb mic/interface that seems pretty sweet for most things I would be doing, it has two inputs and a headphones jack for direct monitoring off the capsule of the mic for no latency listening.