[vox-tech] microphone

[Jeff Newmiller]

Mark K. Kim wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2007 at 04:31:30PM -0700, Jimbo wrote:
>> Greetings:
>> Went to frys and bought a microphone however it doesn't work on a pc.  A 
>> pc mic works just fine.  I guess that it wasn't designed to work on a pc 
>> (it is a shure 8900 brand mic).
>>
>> I see why it doesn't...the regular pc mic has 2 separators in the jack 
>> and the pro mic has just one and it is spaced differently( but the same 
>> size jack).
> 
> I think you may have that backwards... usually professional mics have
> three conductors (2 separators).  They use the extra conductor to carry
> the inverted audio signal and use it to cancel out the noise in the
> non-inverted audio signal.  (They call this a "balanced" cable, as
> opposed to the unbalanced cables that we normally use in the computer
> and home audio.  Wikipedia has a nice description of how balanced audio
> works if it interests anyone.)
> 
> You have a few options here.  Since your mic (according to one of the
> websites I checked) comes with XLR to balanced 1/8" connector, you can
> get an XLR to unbalanced 1/8" connector to replace the connector that
> the mic comes with, which is sort of expensive.  More practical solution
> would be to get a balanced female 1/8" to unbalanced male 1/8"
> converter.  Radioshack folks would have no idea what that means but any
> music store staff should know, and although I've never used such
> converter I'm sure it exists out there.  A slightly dirty trick would be
> to get a stereo female 1/8" to 2 mono male 1/8" splitter and use only
> one of the 1/8" mono male connectors.
> 
> I'm not a music aficionado (compared to some people) so someone may want
> to check my logic so Jimbo doesn't go off wasting $$ unnecessarily.
> 
> -Mark

I think the Shure microphone is a low impedance "dynamic" mic, which
will work very poorly with the high impedance input on a PC.
Get a pre-amp or a usb input device to use this microphone.

(The iMic[1] was recommended by [2]... have not used it myself)

[1] http://emcesd-p.com/podcast/
[2] http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imic/

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