Microphone Upgrade

Communities Audio Hardware & Music
1

I currently have a simple speaker + subwoofer, and steelseries siberia v2 headset as my audio setup. I'm looking for a good microphone setup, and was wondering what you guys suggest, and what you think of what I currently found.

I am looking at the AT2035/AT4040 ([I could grab a used AT4040 to fit in my budget.]  I hear that the AT mics pick up a lot of sound, was wondering how much, if it could be described. :/), They also require phantom power, and xlr cable. So I found this: http://www.amazon.com/Focusrite-2i2-USB-Recording-Interface/dp/B005OZE9SA - Which seems to be fine for such setup.

My budget is around ~$250 I was wondering if anyone had any other suggestions for microphones which I could look into, and other interfaces rather then the Focrusrite 2i2 or any flaws noticed in this.

Note: I'm a complete noob when it comes to the xlr/phantom power required setups. I'm not interested in a USB solution, but am open to suggestions, I plan to use this setup for voice-overs, skype, vocals.

 

2

Vocals for what exactly? Unless you are doing this for something really important, there is literally no reason to drop $250 on a mic. It will make literally no difference in skype, curse chat, teamspeak, etc. As far as high end mics go, I am not sure why you are ruling out usb mics. You are going to need some interface at some point, and usb 2.0 can do transfer rates of ~20 mb/s, and there is no reason that you should need more than that. A proper usb mic should work just fine for just about anything. Now, if you need a different connection for a different reason, such as needing it to be able to plug into some other hardware which doesn't use usb (some sort of middle-man hardware of some sort), then I might understand, but it seems to me that you are looking to spend more money than you need to.

3

Music production (hobby). ~$250 for the mic and usb/audio interface.