.:A while back, I found a great looking microphone on the internet. I was looking for a mic for a couple of projects that I had in mind. Something that could be used to record a number of people at once with good sound quality. I didn't care at the time if it looked like crap. I just wanted something very functional.
[image:23:l] This is what I found. The Snowball by Blue Microphones. Not only was this thing in my low and amateurish price range (retails for about $99, you can find them a little cheaper), but it was USB plug and play and looked just fucking cool. I pondered the purchase for a few weeks, reading reviews of the mic here and there. Most were fairly positive, especially for use by amateurs and others just starting out. Most of the negative reviews were by people who seemed to be looking for very high end equipment at a very low cost, or by people who seemed to have problems with mic not accepting the firmware upgrade (that link is straight to the file), or other hardware problems. But even most of those people had sent it back for replacement and got it pretty quickly with few problems. Some of the negatives also involved using the mic with linux systems (which concerned me, because I use linux in my day to day home projects).
I took the hit and ordered the mic.
It came quickly, like most Amazon purchases. I opened the box and found a nice solid mic, a stand and a USB cable. It took literally less than a minute to affix the mic to the stand and plug it in.
About the mic: It's solid, round and heavier than I expected. It's a little larger than a baseball, and while I would never hurl this particular mic at someone's head, it gives the impression that it would hold up better in the impact than someone's skull would. It's got a simple three-position switch on the back for different uses. Position 1 is for recording something directly in front of the mic (unidirectional), position 2 is also unidirectional , but with a -10db PAD to reduce "the output of the mic for use with loud sound sources that could cause distortion of the signal", and position 3 is for omnidirectional use, picking up everything around the mic.
About the stand: Metal collapsible tripod base. Not as sturdy as it looks, but a little sturdier than it feels, if you follow my meaning. When you adjust the height, it kind of wobbles, and the lock doesn't feel as secure as I'd like, though it seems to hold up okay, especially under the weight of the mic.
Together: They have this retro look and feel that I really like.
I plugged it into my linux machine, and found it didn't work.
Some research online (under the duress of wanting it to work and not having slept, said research was a little sloppy), got me to at least record something. But it was very low, slow and not very pleasing at the moment. I fucked around for a little while longer, found the high gain patch and tried to install that (the patch is not linked on the website, I eventually found it on a blog or forum – I can't remember, at the time I was mildly pissed and deprived of sleep, and tried to install it.
No dice. It's an exe file, and it wouldn't install the firmware under WINE. At that point I gave up for the opportunity to sleep and finish a very long week of working and not getting much sleep after that day due to insomnia and Easter.
This morning, I came home from work and brought the mic upstairs where my brother has his variety of laptops, all running Windows. I plugged the mic in, and ran the firmware patch without a problem. It didn't occur to me to test the mic before patching it, I was just dead set on doing it. I installed Audacity on the lappy and started to record, fucking with the switch and software settings to get a varied mix of results.
It works. And it works well. I made some recordings and exported them to mp3's and they sounded okay to me. Especially for what I have in mind.
I haven't tried it on the linux machine with the new firmware yet. But I'm in no rush today. It works great in Windows, and most of what I'll be doing with it I'll be doing with the laptop anyway (it's portable and easily managable).
So overall, I have to say that I am thrilled with this mic. It's a great addition to my long-term plans, fairly low cost for pretty damn good quality. I may one day invest in better and more expensive eqiupment if things really take off with this, but at the moment, I can't see the need.
Blue Microphone has a bunch of other microphones in varied designs, all with the same retro feel and style.
Again, if you have bought or plan to buy this mic, and want the high gain firmware patch, remember that you can't actually see the link anywhere on the site. I linked it above, but to repeat myself and give you the actual address, the firmware patch can be found here:
http://www.bluemic.com/update/snowball/SnowballHighGain.exe.
Happy podcasting, home studio recording or whatever the fuck it is you do.
AB
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