Recording Voice Audio to a PC

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[Food] Food-Giant

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Hopefully there is someone here who does some kind of music recording to their PC.

What is the best bang-for-your-buck microphone that can be used with a regular sound card? I'm not too familiar with high quality PC recording, so I'm really not even sure this is possible.
 
SharpieFiend said:
The Shure SM58 is pretty much the de facto standard vocal microphone. What are you going to do with it?

http://www.shure.com/ProAudio/Products/WiredMicrophones/us_pro_SM58-CN_content
Click to expand...

Thats an XLR mic, so he would need a pre-amp of some sort to convert it to line level that a pc soundcard would use as input.

Another option is something like a BlueMic: snowball which has a builtin pre-amp and connects via USB. (never used this... just heard about it).


For a project to record voice I used some shure mics + a cheap mixing board to allow the XLR mics to work with a pc.
 
I was really looking to use it for just recoring acoustic guitar into my PC. I don't need anything fancy, just enough to make it not sound like I'm in a bathroom or a closet, you know. I was hoping for something on low budget.

I like the BlueMic products. I may look into a cheaper one than you linked.

Thanks for the input guys!
 
Do I NEED a pre-amp to be able to hear anything if I record with something like an SM58 (or the SM57 which is instrument/vocal)?
 
[Food] Food-Giant;1032238465 said:
Do I NEED a pre-amp to be able to hear anything if I record with something like an SM58 (or the SM57 which is instrument/vocal)?
Click to expand...

I assumed it needed phantom voltage since the shure i have does, but the manual doesn't say anything about it. Thats why I needed a mixer/preamp.

It might work with some sort of XLR to 1/8" cable, but i don't know. Best to ask somebody who has hooked it up to a pc before.
 
For the Shure mic, it is mic level. You will need phantom power to up the voltage/sound level on this, otherwise your sound level on your record will be way too low.

There a small units that do this and don't cost very much.

If you are recording with the audio that was built onto your motherboard, don't expect any incredible sound recording. My experience has been (though possibly dated to some degree) and the audio that is recorded is poor. I haven't tried this in a while because I've been using mixers (firewire) or boxes like Sonus' Firebox (which is external to the pc) to do this, which has worked very well.
 
I've hooked my SM58 directly into my sound card and it's fine.

I have a M-Audio Fast Track Pro for when I want to do some serious recording though.
 
[Food] Food-Giant;1032238465 said:
Do I NEED a pre-amp to be able to hear anything if I record with something like an SM58 (or the SM57 which is instrument/vocal)?
Click to expand...

Phantom power is not required for the SM series.
 
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