If you have a guitar center or similar in town, you can go audition mics in your price range. <250 won’t get you far for condensers, but you could go dynamic. Go try some and find out if you like the sound. If you yell a lot, get a dynamic.
Sm57/58 or audix i5 are good and cheap dynamics.
If you get an xlr connected mic, find one used. Mics last a long time with half-decent care. You can find a good 57 for $50 on eBay, though there are fakes floating around.
If your budget goes up, get an se electronics 2200a ii c and an interface, best bang-for-buck LDC in the $150-300 range around atm.
Careful with the hardware, DACs are for output, ADCs are for input. Anything labeled “interface” will do both.
Don’t get a mixer unless you know you need one; get an interface. Mixer is just adding more hardware with preamps that are already built into the interface.
USB mics are cheap. They sound cheap, but the cost is low. I say avoid them, but as much as I hate to say it, it’s not a bad jumping off point if you want something for next to nothing. I wouldn’t spend more than $50-60 on a USB mic. Any more and go get an interface and a 57, both used. Get XLR from Amazon (cheap), redco (custom), or solder your own.
Edit: Ah, just remembered the line audio cm3. Not ideal for voice but worlds ahead of any condenser of similar price. Gotta import them but if you can wait they are killer. Might throw up a voice demo in a bit.
You know, the Zoom H-series microphones wouldn’t be too bad if it’s spoken recordings. Stereo microphones give a really nice presence with voice (and instrumental) recordings.
the zoom stuff is awful for long form due to drift, and bad for stationary work; i.e., it’s built for location recording, so there are quality compromises to make it as versatile as it is. Other than that, you’re right; it’s not a bad way to get a mic and recorder in one package.
They’re a little rough around the edges but that shotgun mic might be good to help you isolate outside noises. Get a cheap arm and GG.
I’ve heard nothing but good about the focusrite scarlett series. The solo seems like its a good deal but I havent played with them. Maybe someone else can speak to their ease of use/quality.
pretty much all shotgun mics are essentially omni in the lows; they should be avoided indoors; supercardioid gives the best balance between isolation and even freq response.
sE Electronics T2
Shure SM57
EV RE50B
Schoeps MK41/CMC6U
did not use any effects, save for a brickwall limiter at the tippy top, but I don’t think anything hit it. also some very subtle gain to roughly match the levels but mostly untouched.
also don’t run excessively long cables or run them alongside power. i did so you might hear the interference; note though that if you can hear environmental noise, that means it isn’t being masked by shitty hardware noise.
I’m not familiar with the YouTube Channel format you mentioned, but you can get great simple sound using a audio technica 803 lav mic paired with a little Tascam DR-10x.
Record 24-bit wav… add 3-4x compression and your pretty much all set. That’s probably about the cheapest pro-setup.
Blue’s USB offerings are ubiquitous because they are accessibly inexpensive and because Blue already had a reputation making high end mics for music. Personally, I think the Yeti sounds very poor, so I’d look for generic copies; i.e., how much worse can they be? They are all cheap electret capsules disguised as LDCs anyway.
Oh and don’t use a lav, if you can avoid it. They are fine for backup and portability if you need wireless, but they sound awful compared to a mic out front of you. You don’t listen to people by sticking your ear on their chest or side of their face. The placement is decidedly inferior; it gives you a nasty, throaty low-midrange, and any lav under $300-400 is a much greater offender of this.
IMO, no. If you can get the snowball on a good sale then its probably not that bad… but its big, ugly, and doesnt sound any better than other cheap USB mics in its price point.
I got this on a sale for 35 and just bought a cheap ass neewer arm and called it good.
If your room isn’t treated for sound / if you have background noise from computers, traffic or whatever, I would strongly suggest using a dynamic instead of a condenser mic.