The Flying Sloth

Unfortunately there are ongoing lockdowns in my country and when I say locally I mean about 4000 km away. I have also found the store and associated SoundCloud presence but as I mentioned it's controlled by the manufacturer so I'm not sure I'd trust it too far. Absolutely agree the prices don't seem outrageous assuming they're not just repackaged Chinese OEMs.

Hey guys, I'm well aware this is a shot in the dark given the low volume of sales for these mics but I was wondering if anyone had any experience with / thoughts on these unbranded Russian ribbon microphones. A pair have shown up locally and I'm considering grabbing them, I'm aware of the fragility of ribbon mics and I've not been able to locate these models as OEM from ShuaiYin, Feilo or any of your other generic Chinese manufacturers. There are very few sound files available on instruments other than drums (meaning there is a single video available which is using them as drum room mics) outside of those released by the manufacturer themselves and a single testimonial from a relatively unknown university professor. Would appreciate any thoughts on or experiences with these mics.

Best bit is that if you ever want to upgrade to a proper XLR setup, you can still use the same mic and save some upfront cost until you're ready to get a new mic

I'll second this, take a look at the guide in my signature for further info on how to pick mics.

Don't even get me started on the Slate Media Raven...

Absolutely you don't need it, but they're pretty cool, While you're looking at that though, why not pick up a Control2USB or Behringer Studio L? They do the same job but with heaps more buttons to press and some cool lights and stuff !!! You'd be surprised how many audio gear decisions come down to how many buttons and knobs a thing has.

This is nothing to do with XLR mics and everythiung to do with your GPU having coil whine and introducing interference to your USB circuits

If you don't want background noise you want a dynamic mic, the Samson Q2U, AT2005 and Tbone MB88U are the best choices, take a look at the guide in my signature

Just press Win + G Game bar is great for changing volume on the fly

Powered USB hub or a PCIE USB card would be the next step

Not just changing USB port, changing the USB circuit, like, plug it into the USB front panel if it's plugged into the back,

Take a look at the guide in my signature, sounds as though you'll be looking for a dynamic mic

Coil whine is the issue, your graphics card under load is creating EMI on the USB circuit your interface is plugged into, try a different USB circuit

Neither, I'd pick a half decent budget interface like the UMC202HD or perhaps even a MOTU M2

Yeah, no, I purchase all my KZ iems from Aliexpress and I'm pretty sure they ship to just about everywhere

I mean, some people here are going to disagree with me but I would prefer KZ iems over just about anything in this list from a value perspective. Take a look at some reviews, they're damn good for the money

If you're looking to record Foley sound I think a portable recorder may be more what you're looking for, the Zoom line of portable recorders are really good (I've used the h4n a bunch myself) and they just record onto an SD card. If you're specifically looking for a USB interface I'd suggest you pay close attention to the room it's going in so that it can be properly acoustically treated. More importantly perhaps is for you to understand how many microphones you need to be recording with at the same time, see, if you only need a couple of inputs the recommendations we will have for you are vastly different (Audient have great pres at a decent price for small format interfaces) than we would have if you need a bunch of channels (RME digiface USB has lowest dollar per channel) Price is also important and if you're on a small budget you can't get better value than the Behringer UMC HD series, the preamps may not be the greatest but they Dona damn fine job for the money and what they are.

The short answer to your question is to use high quality headphones, as in, not a gaming headset.

I don't mean that in relation to tuning, I mean it in relation to technique, the technique to sing or play a 1 hour set is completely different from spending a day in a studio. Drummers get caught out the most, you don't need to smash the drums, the mics will hear you, play softer but still with energy, many drummers can't do that. It's a similar scenario for most other instruments, I'm no great drummer and I'm downright terrible at guitar but sometimes I've replaced complete tracks on a project with myself or a friend because the artist didn't understand how to play properly and usually they can't tell and I don't tell them. Also, 99% of artists who claim to not use Autotune have no idea whether or not the engineer played around in Melodyne, even if only to fix up the worst notes.

This, price is based on time. I already have the gear/plugins so the most valuable thing is the time I use those plugins/gear on your track. The amount of time spent on a song often scales linearly with the price to master it. Absolutely there are cheap mastering services out there but likely they're just chucking the track into Ozone 9 and letting it do its automated thing (and the cheap online ones may have their own proprietary algorithm but it's essentially the same thing). I could take your vocal track, shove it into FL Studio Newtone and snap everything to the closest note for $10 or I could spend hours in Melodyne going note by note and fix all the transitions one by one (and make it sound natural) but it would cost a tonne more. In short, there is no industry standard price, it all depends on how much the time of your engineer is worth and how much of the engineer's time your track costs. Completely agree. Also, being a good singer is very different from being a good studio singer. Just like being a good drummer/guitarist/basically any musicianist is completely different from being good at that in the studio. If I have a singer/anyone in the studio for the first time a large portion of our time together is me teaching them how to sing/play correctly in a studio. When someone is recording in a shitty environment or didn't have someone there to help them sing/play properly for recording and they send you stems that exponentially decreases the quality of the final product and exponentially increases the amount of time I need to spend to try and make it sound half decent.

Personally, I think I would actually recommend a 3U Audio CM1 Teal as my first choice, obviously if you have background noise condenser mics aren't ideal but with vocal tone like yours the smoothness from a ribbon or nice edge-terminated condenser microphone might sound quite nice. Other mics that could sound nice off the top of my head would be an Oktava MK219 or ADK Hamburg which both lean closer to the Neumann-esque tone rather than anything edge terminated. As for dynamic mics, the SM58 is almost identical to the Tbone MB75 from thomann so I'd probably instead suggest that you get the MB75 and a Klark Teknik CT1 inline preamp. For a little bit further information take a look at the guide in my signature. You're right, for the money they're pretty good but unfortunately the UMC22 is the worst performing interface in the product stack and I refuse to recommend it due to it being a legacy device with no driver support and poor performance. So long as the cable is shielded you're unlikely to notice any difference in daily use. Personally, I own a UMC1820 and with that I've needed to purchase quite a few cables to take full advantage of it, every time, I purchase the same cheap as anything cables from Thomann and they do a damn fine job.

KZ S1 and S2 work like this

1, Any quality boom arm will be fine 2, You don't need a shock mount, it's designed after a stage mic with low handling noise 3, USB will last, it's not as though they have an expiry date but as detailed in the guide in my signature they're more complicated than (and thus more likely to break) than an XLR mic. That's why the mics suggested here are great, both USB and XLR for if/when the USB dies.

This is just patently incorrect, while both Focusrite and Music Group produce some of the best sounding preamps on the market the Solo and 202 both do not have enough gain to properly drive demanding dynamic microphones (Think 7B or RE20) for studio use but they also both have more than enough gain for most dynamic mics for everyday use (though I would recommend a Klark Teknik CT1 for both, and at $24 they're not too expensive). The 202 has two preamps, a dedicated headphone amplifier circuit and multiple outputs while the solo is more comparable to the UMC22. Even at the same price the 202HD is the far better purchase, BESIDES, the 202hd is still easily available for 64 usd from the supplier I recommend making it far better priced even than the Solo. The cheapest interfaces with significant upgrades over the UMC line are from Audient and MOTU, the scarlett line are more or less equivalent to the Behringer line and for high channel count interfaces the best value easily comes from RME, the only reason I would recommend a scarlett interface is if you really like red and are willing to pay for that privilege. Though you disagree with me we agree in the end that the Q2U/2005/MB88u is the best choice which shows how obvious of a decision it really is, OP, if you want a dynamic mic but don't want to splurge for XLR they are your choice, when the USB circuit dies (as USB mics are often prone to do) at least yo u have XLR connectivity as a backup to slowly ease you into a better setup should you wish to purchase one at that time.

Okay, let me just finish this one, OP, the look of a mic does not matter, if you care so much about mic aesthetics why did you make this post? Just pick a mic you like the look of and run with it. We've well and truly gone through your options, the Q2U, AT2005 and Tbone MB88U are the best choices since you will have background noise, if you still want a 'streamer mic' your choices are to get something condenser that won't work as well or get a good studio dynamic mic and blow out your budget. Take a look at the guide in my signature and decide what it is you really want to do. Both of these statements are very incorrect, a UMC202HD is superior to the Solo and much better priced, add in the Behringer C2 microphone, an XLR cable and a cheap eBay scissor arm and you've got yourself a $100-120 full XLR setup with multiple inputs that is very workable. I've gone over this before here but I own quite a few mics including tube microphones and other fun things like that at astronomical price points (compared to what we're talking about here) and yet I still use a Behringer C2 as my daily driver mic.