Out of the following 4, which one is the best for the buck?

Special Interest Groups Recording Equipment
1

Out of the following 4, which one is the best for the buck?

Blue Yeti
Blue Snowball
Audio-Technica ATR2500
Samson Meteor Mic

2

What’s the job? Are you reading for an audiobook? PodCast? Violin practice. Violin practice over Skype?

The Yeti is the obvious choice for voice work, but there are comments. There is no shortage of posters on the forum complaining about noisy performances and an inability to make AudioBook Sound Standards with their Yeti. We have to be clear that of the millions of Yeti microphones out there, certain percentage of them aren’t going to work right. The most common problem is data whine leaking into the sound. This is the Yeti Curse or “frying mosquitoes.” Once you have that noise, you should send the microphone back and get something Non-USB for your show.

What usually happens is people decide to mess with it for months and then give up and get something else. The noise is a cousin to babies screaming on a jet. Impossible to get rid of.

ACX AudioBook recommends an analog microphone and a USB MicPre and digitizer. They mention the Snowball in passing as an alternative…if you absolutely have to.

The longest posting/thread on the forum is Ian who is using a Blue Snowball to produce AudioBooks in Hollywood, at least he was last I talked to him, so it can be done. It took a little over a year to get everything set up and working.

Koz

3

Did you decide what you were going to do with your current Yeti?

Koz

4

I mainly use my mic for Skype, live-streaming and gameplay-commentary. I had a Blue yeti but I got that baby screaming on a get curse. My previous Yeti got the frying mostquitoes curse, so I don’t think I’m going with the Blue Yeti… ever again. My main 3 mics that I’m looking at now are the ATR2100, ATR2005 and ATR2500

5

Before you write the check, Google complaints. Or comments/reviews and then only pay attention to the complaints. The glowing reviews are written by the makers and marketers, but the pans, especially if there’s a typo here and there and multiple people complain about roughly the same thing, are probably real.

You do have to peel off the one user who complains for pages about stupid stuff. You have to pay attention.

Good luck.

Koz

6

Billions of people use Snowballs and Yetis every day. It’s possible you have a USB Microphone Hostile Computer.

Save the receipts.

Koz