[Andy S]

Folks,

I am getting to the point where I want to start doing some recording to my PC. I have already done some guitar dubbing on a couple of collabs, but now am looking at recording guitar, vocals, bass and a drum machine.

I saw this mic today:
CAD U37 USB Condenser Microphone

at Guitar Center and was wondering how does it sound. The other option would be to buy a small mixer with Phantom power, and get a similar CAD mic that requires phantom power and run that to the input of the PC.

So, is it worth it to buy this mic for $69.99 and go through the USB port, or get a small mixer w/phantom power that I could also run my
J-Station amp simulator through it also. That other CAD mic costs the same.

I guess the main question is , Does anyone know how good or bad this mic sounds?

(I must really like to talk or type as I could have eliminated all the first part and just asked that last question!! Doh!!)

[pipelineaudio]

While I will risk taking MASSIVE amounts of flames and abuse, I will claim that most of the rebadged chinese mics will be rather close in quality. They all have their individual peaks and dips both in separate models and within the tolerances they claim to give in any one line.

I'd look at this problem from another angle though, the lack of thought and/or market research put in by most of these companies into the actual end users' needs:

Lets say you have a USB mic and it works great. Let's even say that they figured some smart way to monitor, either the Y chord solution that many made, or an actual output with an ASIO driver running it.

What happens if you want to add another instrument?

Good luck with that

I should add the caveat, that at least CEntrance has done their homework and does offer an aggregated ASIO driver for multiple units for their USB mic preamp ( CEntrance, Inc. / About us )

I would think a non USB mic would be far more versatile, unless the usb one also has an xlr out.

It still seems prudent to me to invest in a multichannel soundcard with good asio drivers, and if it doesnt have mic pres on it, then the mixer would probably be a good choice to add.

[Andy S]

Hey, No flak from me!! I appreciate all the info I can get.

And I've been thinking about the same thing...."What happens if you want to add another instrument?"

So, yeh, I'm probably going to add a few more dollars to the mix and find a small mixer with Phantom power and go from there.

Appreciate the extra input!

[Tekker]

How much are you looking to spend? There are some good inexpensive interfaces you can get with preamps built in.

-tkr

[Andy S]

Originally Posted by Tekker

How much are you looking to spend? There are some good inexpensive interfaces you can get with preamps built in.

-tkr

mmm...Not real sure. I have seen a couple of mics that run i the $80 to $100 range, and on sale for around $60-$80. I forget what a friend has up in Columbus, but he paid $79 and it sounds really good and clean. I was thinking of just doing one input at a time,but the more I thought about it...Nah!! So, if I have to spend , let's say, $70-$80 here for a mic, then a few weeks later, a bit more $?? for a nice preamp card with a few extra inputs, well, that would be ok.

Can you remind me , name wise , of a few that don't cost an arm&leg and I'll hunt those down and see?

Thanks!!

[Tekker]

Originally Posted by Andy S

Can you remind me , name wise , of a few that don't cost an arm&leg and I'll hunt those down and see?

M-Audio has several in a variety of price ranges, so these would be good to look into.

The cheapest would probably be the MobilePre USB ($130) and it has two inputs with mic preamps.

-tkr