Anyway, as a FL teacher about to step into podcasting, and who uses an iBook G4, and doesn’t have a lot of money to spend, which usb condenser microphone would you recommend?

I look forward to your reply.

The foam windscreen could be replaced with a standard piece of foam and a few well placed rubber bands. If the color of the foam puts you off, you can usually get windscreens in different colors at any place that sells mics and cut them up as needed.

The few podcasts I’ve done have been done on a standard CD recorder. We’ve got a few with XLR inputs that make it easy to just plug in a mic and go (although they were on the expensive side). Editing was done by ripping the CD and using any audio or video editing package (I used Vegas but Audacity will work just as well for something like this). This approach can allow you to splice an interview together using one mic and no one will be able to tell. I’ve even seen mics that allow one to record on the mic itself and extract the file with a USB connector. Very cool.

Finally, try the condenser mic before you buy one. We use them for normal sound reinforcement, but never had to use one for voiceover work, at least the kind of stuff we do. Not sure if it would be worth the extra money. The Shure SM 58 is a wonderful dynamic mic that has been around for years and might be worth considering if you want to venture into professional equipment. If you do get a condenser, make sure Phantom power is available on the mixer or via some other means. They (condenser mics) are a lot more sensitive, which can be both good and bad.

-D

With my students, I use a Logitech USB Mic you referred to in your post. It works best if I tell my kids to “point it at their nose” to avoid popping and hissing. I think your Plantronics windscreen might be a good solution for popping and sibilance on the Logitech also…

But I really love my Zoom H2 because it doubles as a great stand-alone portable digital recorder and USB mic. See my review of it here: http://musicisnotforinsects.blogspot.com/2007/11/great-digital-recorder-zoom-h2.html

Thanks for these great tech posts. Keep ‘em coming!

It is USB based, folds up into a small hard plastic case that is great to take on the road and has a sort of built in windscreen along with the micrphone so that it won’t fall off like a foam one. The box stores carry them for around $50-$60 but Amazon currently has them for right at $40 - I just bought three for our classroom through a grant.

I have heard great things about the Snowball but then in reading reviews at the end of the summer - when I was looking to buy a microphone - many people were having problems using Vista with the Snowball. This might be fixed by now.

As Tony commented above - Levelator really makes up for a lot of volume problems. Great program.

Thanks for your great review. I just purchased a H2 from Zoom to help “up my game” with mobile recording and am eager to see if there is a dramatic increase in quality from what I am doing now using mostly i-Rivers.

Tony, I’m glad to hear you’ve had good success with both the Logitech USB mic and Levelator. I haven’t used Levelator much myself, so I probably need to revisit and use it again!