Give me your choice of the best USB condenser mic

[nicheminer]

I'm looking to record with Camtasia 6 and decided to go for a usb condenser mic.

I have a cheapy Logitech headset mic for Skype, but even with the mic away from my mouth and with a foam shield, it still sounds bad with the Ps & Bs and sometimes S! Made the mistake of not getting a usb mic, so the soundcard isn't helping on my oldish Dell.

To make your choices easier, I've looked on Ebay (I'm in the UK)

Here is what I've found with prices (GBP not USD)

Samson G-Track GMUI £89
Samson COUI £75
MXL USB £69
Bluemic - Snowball £59
CM-530 £70
U600 £73
Behringer C1U £39

So which of these usb mics would be best for voice. I have to buy in the UK because the exchange rate means that everything from the USA is 25% more than it was in July.

Thanks,

Graham

[Frank Bruno]

I bought the MXL USB microphone a few weeks ago and it works great very happy.

You can hear the MXL in action with some of the videos I created over at this blog...
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You can spend upwards of $3-4k for a good microphone but its not really necessary for most basic IM stuff.

Frank Bruno

[nicheminer]

Hi Frank,

Listened to your video and noticed the 'S' sound is a bit, well 'sssssssy'.

I found this to a much greater degree when I used my Logitech headset to record voice for a video.

Trouble is that once you hear that Sssss sound then you almost start to listen for it and it spoils the rest of the message.

Maybe I'm being fussy here, but I want a usb mic that won't give me that problem.

Graham

[Chris_Willow]

You can easily edit that out in camtasia or any audio processing software.
But I'd go for the snowball mic anyways...

Chris

[Francis Miller]

The audio distortion may be a result of the compression applied to the audio as much as the quality of the audio recording.

When I do a screen video recording in Camtasia, the audio quality can be fine when I am editing it. But, when I produce it as a swf file, distortion can appear if I compress it too much.

Obviously there is a trade off between size of file and audio quality.

[spudzz]

I've got a Samson and it's the proverbial dog's b*******

[nicheminer]

Spudzz

Which model have you got? The left or right dog's bllx? ;-))

Graham

[LonNaylor]

Don't forget the extremely capable and affordable Audio Technica AT2020 USB

I've heard or used every other mic mentioned thus far and believe the Audio Technica to provide superior, rich sound.