Cheap mic for recording in room?

[milkandmeat]

Where can i find a cheap mic for recording stuff onto my comp in my room? I have a prgram for recoridng, I just need a mic. dont need anything great, just decent for messing around. ive been using a little desktop voice mic from walmart that cost about 5 bucks, o anything is better. any ideas?

 

[vinterland]

Re: Cheap mic for recording in room?

Your just going to the mic input on your soundcard?

 

[milkandmeat]

Re: Cheap mic for recording in room?

yea i guess, why?

 

[St_Genesius]

Re: Cheap mic for recording in room?

Mics that will feed directly into an 1/8" mini-plug are few, far between and not worth buying. I'm sure it's not what you want to hear, but you may want to consider purchasing one of the many available PC recording interfaces out there, most of which connect via either USB or Firewire and will offer you at the very least a 1/4" input, usually at least one XLR iinput and in many cases, phantom power so that you'll have the option of using a condenser mic (which you will want, if you're doing vocals).

 

[Animal]

Re: Cheap mic for recording in room?

A Shure PG57 and a in-expensive mic-pre amp seems to be in order for you.

 

[Kev]

Re: Cheap mic for recording in room?

I snagged a b/new sm57 for £10 + £15 delivery on ebay bargain of the century, seeing as i paid £80 for my other one.

 

[milkandmeat]

Re: Cheap mic for recording in room?

guys i got this mic from best buy...

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...t&productCategoryId=cat08343&id=1051384427344

i plugged it into the computer and it doesn't record. my other little mic i plugged into it works so all the settings on the computer are correct. at first it worked for a second, but i could barely hear what i recorded. it says on the back of the box that it works with recording devices so i dont know what the deal it. is it just defective mic?

 

[milkandmeat]

Re: Cheap mic for recording in room?

also, i dont know if this makes any difference, but the mini-jack only had 1 ring on it, as opposed to the little desktop mic that has 2 rings.

 

[GuitarStv]

Re: Cheap mic for recording in room?

It's probably not defective, it's just a dynamic mic. You probably don't have enough gain to actually hear what's being recorded. Your other mic was probably a condensor mic that was being powered by your sound card. Dynamic mics = very low signal levels but handle higher noise and are less fragile, Condensor mics = high signal levels, handle less noise, are fragile, and require power.

 

[RW James]

Re: Cheap mic for recording in room?

2 rings vs 1 ring = stereo vs mono

Your sound card has a stereo input. Theoretically, you could get another mic and stereo-to-mono splitter (an inexpensive cable thing with a male stereo plug wyed into two female mono plugs) and get a little bit fatter sound in your recording.

Back to your mic - I think that should work for you. You need to get into the record level settings for your sound card. They should be available through Control Panel - you'll have to dig around and find them. It's a pain to set up, but once you're there it's done.

Don't despair, you can make this work and you don't have to spend a fortune to get there. You won't have radio ready recordings, but good enough to share.

Good luck

 

[Davey]

Re: Cheap mic for recording in room?

if its a better mic, it will more than likely need phanotm power, which means buying a mixer with a mic preamp, as your sound card wont have enough power to make anything recorded by the mic audible.

but seeing that one, i'd say its not lol.. looks like my other one, which is pure crap.

save up and buy a pg57 and a small mixer like the soundcraft compact4.

 

[milkandmeat]

Re: Cheap mic for recording in room?

A Shure PG57 and a in-expensive mic-pre amp seems to be in order for you.

i know nothing about stuff like this. how inexpensive can a mic pre-amp be, and where can i get it?

 

[Davey]

Re: Cheap mic for recording in room?

a mixer such as the soundcraft compact 4 will set you back for about 120 new. less if you buy used.

a pg57 is about 70.. or 45-50 used

you could get away with less than 200 and have a pretty damn good setup

 

[RW James]

Re: Cheap mic for recording in room?

By the way, I agree with Davey. That is pretty much the direction I went, but it sounded like you didn't want spend that much.