Consumer Electronics and Other Technology

Not too terribly long ago I contemplated doing a radio show and I needed a professional sounding microphone, without the professional expense. I asked around and right away, my advisers told me to check out the Blue brand of microphones, and in particular, to get the Snowball for it simplicity coupled with dynamite results.

So, expecting to find it for $100 USD, instead I found it for $60 USD on Amazon.com, and they delivered it a few days later. I checked, and this is still the going price for this gem.

Don’t you just love it when things go smoothly? I sure do.

The microphone comes with a tripod which was easy to assemble, and the round microphone allows me to position the head straight on, at an angle to either side, or up and down at will. The mike is covered by a metal  screen, and it’s STURDY – this thing could be used as a shot put if you had to, and I doubt it would break. It fits in easily to the USB port, and pretty much installs itself.

There are three different voice settings; I prefer #1 for my audiobook recording or voice over sessions. It was a bit of trouble getting the settings on programs like Skype to recognize the Snowball as my default microphone, but they weren’t reflective of a flaw in this product. It was simply a matter of forcing Skype to recognize it.

I think I expected that it would be difficult to edit the audio files, or capture what it was I wanted to say or record. But, for a small sum of $40 USD, I purchased the AVS4YOU suite of products, which includes a simple audio editing program. This is sufficient for the spoken voice, though I would not recommend it for more complex mixing. There are many other programs that I could review at another time for that; but just for the simplicity of a BlogTalkRadio program, creating a Kickstarter Video, or just recording your memoir, this will do the trick.

Pamela, a companion program to Skype is just perfect for recording phone calls that I initiate or receive through Skype. and this program easily recognized the Snowball as my stalwart companion as well.

Blue has other versions of microphones available, some are shiny, and have a lot more features. But, I wanted something that was simple, high quality yet it wasn’t intimidating. I was so pleased to discover an electronics company that just did their job the right way, the first time, and charged a fair price.