Looking for a preferably USB Microphone mainly for voice chat since I recently went from a gaming headset to stand alone headphones and was wondering where the best bang for buck was. Was thinking about a snowball but they seem to have gone up in price a fair bit. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Just get any 5$ microphone. Nobody cares, as most games just compress your voice anyway.
The quality will be the same compared to expensive ones, unless you are willing to dish out more than $200 for a proper mic.
Mandatory infographics are here and also here.
If you're just using it for general chatting, a cheap microphone will do.
If you want to do things like record your voice for content creation, the Rode USB (non-mini) is pretty good and comes with a pop filter.
Work from home has caused big price inflation in usb mics.
You likely want a directional mic, (likely called cardioid) so it picks up less background noise, unless there is more than one person.
For best results it needs to be close to your mouth, which is why you see the podcast folk using one on a boom arm.
But for calls etc. one sitting on the desk or clipped to the top of you monitor will likely be fine.
I’m a fan of the Samson gear, which is similar in performance to the snowball/yeti stuff but cheaper. I wouldn’t pay over $100 unless you have aspirations to do sound production stuff.
There are Omni directional mics, and cheap Chinese mics starting around $30 that would be ok if you are in a quiet environment, but these can sometimes pick up keyboard noise as well as your speech, if you are gaming etc.
The Neewer stuff on Amazon is decent for it's price like this https://www.amazon.com.au/Microphone-Computer-Cardioid-Conde…. Lots of review on youtube etc. Don't know much about the cheaper stuff on Amazon though.
Thanks for the help guys I was going to buy a Neewer but heard they sound quite bad going directly to 3.5 jack and lucked out on eBay with a used $20 snowball
Lol for the last nine years I've been using a Guitar Hero mic. Everything works great and audio is clear. Just need to print out a tripod for the MIC. MIC noise cancelling and gain can be handled software wise.