But not all recording software plays nice with USB mics. Apple GarageBand, for instance, typically recognizes a USB mic immediately and asks if you want to use it as an input (if you want to use it as a headphone monitor as well, set it for both input and output). Among USB mics, it's mostly (but not always) condenser mics and (but not always) cardioid patterns.įinally, most USB mics are plug-and-play ready. Outside of the USB mic world, there are several styles of microphone (condenser, dynamic, ribbon) that, combined with the various microphone polar patterns (cardioid, hypercardioid, omnidirectional, figure-eight), produce a wide range of options for the recording engineer. Typically, most of the mics with heavy DSP are for gamers. The latter can still be OK if the processed sound meets your project requirements, however. And still some others glob the DSP on in thick coats. Others avoid DSP completely and offer you the purest, high-bitrate signal they can. The biggest difference between competing USB mics is how they use digital signal processing (DSP). USB mics also often have headphone jacks, which is another abnormality. In the analog studio world, that gain knob is often on a different piece of gear entirely typically pros refer to it as a Mic Pre. Each USB mic is essentially an analog-to-digital converter (DAC), complete with a built-in gain knob. Also note that the mic dictates the maximum sampling rate and bitrate. Any editing you do at the computer is to a signal that has already been digitally processed. The microphones process and digitize the audio directly. The signal from the mic should be more or less pure EQ, dynamic compression, and reverb are all later steps in production.ĭigital mics that use USB cables are a totally different beast. In a typical recording studio scenario, a microphone is an analog piece of gear that sends a signal to a console or computer through an XLR cable (often through a mixer that can handle multiple microphones at once).
Before we dive into the world of USB mics, you should know how most professional microphones work.
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