James Stone wrote: If it's for singing in the studio, you might check out open design headphones opposed to closed design. This makes it better to hear yourself and others around you when singing. I particularly like Sennheiser because most of their products have replaceable parts. The SM58 mentioned before is a perfectly fine mic for those on a tight studio budget. I would suggest that before the SM57. That's about $100. Dynamic mics are generally going to be cheaper than condensers or ribbons when matching quality to quality. But, there are many new condensers out and the prices are competitive. You might fair better auditioning several of the lower priced condensers if you are going to use this for studio singing. Check out the AKG Perception mics. They are inexpensive. I've never used one, so I don't know anything about them except they are inexpensive and mfr'd in China. Audio-Technica has several inexpensive condensers as well. Shure has an all-around rugged condenser for vocals: SM86. If you want a rugged handheld mic, the SM58 is good. But, you can't beat the Electro-Voice 635A. It use to be advertised as being able to hammer nails and still work fine. It'll never break. I would determine what exactly you'll be using the mic for (you might want a more versatile mic for your first), your budget and then check out the web prices at places like sweetwater or BSW. -- brad fuller http://www.Sonaural.com/ +1 (408) 799-6124

On Tue, 2007-01-02 at 15:15 +0000, James Stone wrote: Most pre-amps include a phantom power supply, so that will not be needed. If you buy a separate pre-amp/mic combo, you have that part of your signal chain already if you upgrade your sound card. You will have a little more control. It may seem absurd to plug in a quality pre-amp/mic into a soundblaster card, but it will result in better quality sound. Plus, you can interchange different pre-amps and mics as you acquire gear in the future, rather than being locked in to an all in one unit. The samson CO1 and art tubeMP looks like it would work for your needs. PF

On Mon, 2007-01-01 at 19:10 +0000, James Stone wrote: If you spend a little bit more on the microphone you can get a Samson C01U USB mic that probably has a better ADC with less noise than your SoundBlaster. I don't know how it compares to other non-USB microphones though. -- Lars Luthman - please encrypt any email sent to me if possible PGP key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x04C77E2E Fingerprint: FCA7 C790 19B9 322D EB7A E1B3 4371 4650 04C7 7E2E

James Stone wrote: In qjackctl (I'm guessing that's what you interface with jack through) you select the Samson as input and you SB as output... -- peace, love & harmony Atte http://www.atte.dk | quintet: http://www.anagrammer.dk | compositions: http://www.atte.dk/compositions

This may work well for you, since you are on a budget, but I wouldn't recommend it for the long run. You would be buying a Microphone, preamp and USB audio interface all at once, and *when* you decide that you want to upgrade one of those features, you will have to do them all at the same time. The Soundblaster line input is fine for recording. Don't even consider the mic input. It is too noisy. Unfortunately you are looking at about $200 for a low cost preamp and large-diaphragm condenser, which is out of your price range, but would really give you a nice sound, even with the soundblaster line in. Later, you will find out that the mic pre is too noisy, so you will spend more on a better one, then you will find out that the mic itself is generating quite a bit of noise (not dynamic of course, but they expose more preamp noise due to gain requirements) so you will upgrade that. Finally, you may want to upgrade the sound card because it will become evident that the soundblaster has an annoying limiter built in that makes it tough to overload the digital signal, but does squash the loud parts of the signal, changing the sound without your permission.

James Stone wrote: Great. OTOH, obtaining a mixer will give you a bit more functionality when you want to add more external sound outputs (like CD player, etc.) to your PC. You can get some inexpensive ones that already have mic preamps and phantom. Think of the audio input as 2 channel input, not stereo. Connect line out of preamp to one of the channel inputs.

On Mon, 2007-01-01 at 19:10 +0000, James Stone wrote: For large-diaphragm condensers, check out the SE Electronics SE2200A, and the Studio Projects C1 which has a more pronounced top-end. The SM58 is a dynamic mic, so the frequency response rolls off somewhat after about 15KHz. On the other hand, it's therefore tough, which is why it's so popular for live work. Also, it's designed to be used up close, so it rolls off the bass response to compensate for the proximity effect. For headphones. I have a set of AKG K240 which work fine for me. Although they have a higher impedance than most headphones, so you really have to crank up the output levels. bye John