I’ve read a lot of posts and watched a lot of Youtube videos on podcasting, and there are apparently thousands of them on the subject of what the first set of equipment should be for someone just starting out with no real background, and especially what microphone is best.
I think I’ve more-or-less inadvertently stumbled on a strong contender.
A few days ago there was a deal on Slickdeals (now expired) for the Samson Go Mic USB Microphone. I think MSRP on this is $50, it seems to go for just under $40 normally, the deal was for $30 from Adorama with a $5 mail-in rebate* for a net cost of $25 shipped. I had seen it and read some things about it before, so I was intrigued- but the place is filling up with microphones, I clearly didn’t need another, so I resisted for a few days. Finally curiosity won out, as it usually does with me, and I ordered it. It got here yesterday and I played around with it for a few hours last night. Turns out I don’t regret the purchase in the least. I’m impressed with the little beastie, I hope I can express why.
Even though I had studied the pictures and videos I was still a bit startled at just how small this thing is in person. There are two parts, the microphone itself and a comparatively heavy base/clip, connected together by a ball-and-socket joint, so that microphone can be set to many angles. The size of the microphone itself reminds me of a rectangular Tic-Tac breath mint dispenser. The base/clip part does add some bulk and quite a bit of weight, but I think you could fit the entire thing in an Altoids tin, with 25% of the room inside left over. It’s tiny. The base is heavy and quite solid, though, with a strong spring clip that seems intended to fasten it to the edge of a notebook computer screen but also has a threaded hole to fasten to normal microphone stands. The clip is not easily removable, although it could certainly be permanently removed for mounting this microphone somewhere for dedicated use, and it’s cheap enough to keep the option in mind.
Let me hit the surprising features first. It’s a USB microphone, so it does not require a separate interface for a computer and recording software (the DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation software), but it does require a computer of some sort. For some of us that’s not a problem, we are seldom out of reach of one or more, but if you need to do mobile recording without a computer perhaps you should check out my comments on the Zoom H6 audio recorder. Though having only a 10mm diaphragm it claims to be a condenser microphone, and even though I was skeptical I now believe it. The market is full of cheap microphones claiming to be condenser mics that are actually contain electret elements or are wired so that they can work either way, usually better with phantom power. Obviously, you can’t use the 5 volts DC from USB directly in place of 48 volt or 24 volt phantom power, it has to be boosted in voltage, and the behavior of the mic reflects that. I actually had a little trouble getting it to power up at first, it didn’t seem to do anything plugged into a hub, then it did power up plugged directly into the computer, and for whatever reason it then seemed happy plugged in anywhere after that first time.. might have just been some manufacturing film on the USB cable contacts. It does take it a couple of seconds for the green “ready” LED to come on, as you’d expect from circuitry boosting 5 volts up to enough to charge largish capacitor plates.
Speaking of the green LED, that’s another great feature… it turns (flickers) red when the microphone starts clipping, giving you feedback on the volume while you’re recording… which leads me to the next, and I think most important feature:
Surprisingly, for a device this tiny, there’s a mini (3.5mm or 1/8″) headphone jack on the edge. That’s a great feature on a portable microphone, letting you hear yourself through the microphone while recording. This gives you instant feedback not only on clipping, but if the microphone is registering too much breath, or if you’ve turned away from it without thinking and the volume has dropped, a thousand other things- you get to hear the signal that’s going from the microphone into the computer. This is a highly-prized feature on USB audio interfaces in general.
Let me be clear; you can certainly plug your headphones directly into the computer without this feature and listen to yourself that way, but there’s a problem with that. When you do that, the microphone is taking the analog signal from the microphone part itself, encoding it in real-time into a digital representation, transmitting it to your computer, where it is subjected to whatever processing you’re applying to it in software, then the resulting bitstream is de-coded back into analog and piped out to your computers speaker jack. All of this is not instantaneous (yet), it takes a fraction of a second- not long, but just long enough that there is a perceptible delay, and it’s enough to drive a lot of people crazy, they never get used to it. Being able to “monitor” your audio signal straight from the microphone is a very helpful feature.
But that leads us to the most important surprise in this little device, and it’s something never even touched on in the vast majority of reviews; the second feature of the headphone jack. It turns out that this tiny microphone is not only an input device, not only does it let you monitor the input in realtime, it’s also a USB audio output device for your computer and software. Provided that your headphones are not high-impedence audiophile or studio monsters, you can use the microphone itself as a DAC and audio headphone amplifier.
That means that you can record a track from the microphone while listening to yourself in the headphones, then hear it played back by your computer in processed form in the same headphones without unplugging them from the mic and plugging them in elsewhere, or changing any settings. Or, with a different setting in your DAW (software) you can listen to one track while recording another, over-dubbing. No mixer or USB audio interface required, this tiny microphone will do it all, at least the basics.
I’ve done monitoring of the “dry” unprocessed signal, monitoring of the “wet” processed signal, both at once (in which the latency creates an echo that most people cannot work with), and overdubbing, all with this tiny little mic occupying only a few square inches, it all works just fine.
So, importantly, how does it sound? IMHO, not bad at all, and remarkably good for such a small device. It does have some quirks and peculiarities, but they’re not severe, and it has most of the qualities you’d expect from a condenser microphone. Obviously, one this size and price is not going to compete with a decent studio microphone, but it really blows most tiny portable microphones out of the water.
The biggest drawback, somewhat surprisingly, is that it really needs either a pop filter of some sort or pretty extreme care not to breathe in its direction. That works, if you point the front of the microphone toward your mouth but point your mouth off to the side of the microphone. Obviously, someone doesn’t have to be speaking directly in your direction in order for you to hear them clearly, this is no different. Still, that’s hard to keep up for long periods without forgetting and moving your head in that direction when speaking. There are some pretty small pop filters out there, but you have to wonder why something of the sort wasn’t put inside the grill of the microphone itself.. and wonder if its possible to do so. Lacking that, maybe a tiny foam windscreen combined with a thin layer of tightly-woven nylon somehow…
Like many condenser microphones it is very sensitive to handling noises and ambient noises, and that is probably its most irritating quality. As is often the case, though, the trade-off benefit is that it’s good at catching vocal nuances and detail. For a podcast it may well be a worthwhile to deal with the noise.
Most users will likely use the cardioid pattern most of the time, and on that setting it works well though you can hear the bass end drop off a bit, especially compared to large-diaphragm condenser microphones that tend to emphasize bass tones. The bass is still there, just attenuated a little, so it’s pretty easy to correct for this in processing. It sounds pretty good raw, and once you apply a little equalization and noise removal it sounds very good. It is very, very sensitive to distance on this setting, much more so than larger condenser mics I’ve played with, and an inch or two can make a big difference in the sound it picks up.
When you switch to the omnidirectional pattern, which is very useful for interviewing and sometimes for audience reactions, the sound-stage really opens up and the frequency response flattens out, it suddenly sounds more natural than the cardioid pattern… but it really starts to pick up every little noise. A computer fan becomes a roar, air coming out of a vent sounds like surf, and a squeaking chair can sound like a new canyon opening up. Too bad, that… if it weren’t for that I’d be tempted to use that setting in any relatively quiet environment. It’s certainly usable raw material, but expect to do some more serious post-processing unless you’re recording in a soundproof studio, and if you are, why are you using this?
I’m not quite sure what to think of the -10db cardioid setting yet. It seems to be intended for voice-overs, and I can see that, but it seems to lose nuance as well, sounding almost like a dynamic mic but still being very sensitive to distance. I’ll give myself more time to get to know and understand it. In some circumstances the “normalizing” effect typical of dynamic microphones, losing a little nuance, is actually a good thing when the vocal nuances are an unwanted distraction.
My impression is that with a little more caution and a little post-processing, the output of this mic is potentially very good indeed for portable podcasting. I think it’s under-rated.
With a decent set of in-ear earphones you could have everything you need for really quite decent podcast recording, other than a computer, in a small case that fits in a pocket. There’s still the pop-filter problem, but there are several ways to work around that.
As for the computer itself, weight and bulk there are a universal problem not restricted to any one application and have been for a long time. Most of that now is about the space needed for a screen and keyboard, which seem to be perpetual problems. Not sure how we’re going to resolve the screen thing, maybe small VR-style headsets. We seem to be attacking the keyboard problem by discouraging literacy and productiveness of any kind. Notebook computers aside, though, another approach might be a DAW setup based on a Raspberry Pi.
– Robert the Wombat
* This will almost certainly be the last time I factor a mail-in rebate from Adorama into any purchasing decision. They make it just about as cumbersome as humanly possible to redeem it. I was under the impression that you could just fill in an on-line application, but no- there is an on-line application, but then you have to download/print the resulting .pdf file, which resists printing properly, along with the original product bar code and the original serial number cut from the box and a copy of the invoice, address an envelope, affix postage, wait for weeks, and…. drum roll… they are supposed to send a MasterCard. In this case, with $5 on it. What the heck am I supposed to do with a card that has only $5 on it? After some thought, I’m hoping to apply it to my Paypal account so it just gets applied to the next purchase.
There’s no way this is worth the effort to me for $5, probably not for $30 or $50… which is what they’re counting on, of course, un-redeemed rebates, ignoring the fact that it ticks off customers and trains everyone to ignore mail-in rebates. I knew better, but persuaded myself that it might not be so bad this time. Silly me. That attitude will remain corrected for a long time now.