microphone Microphone Issues/Recommendations

[Tempest_Spectra]

Hey guys.

 

I have currently got an Asus Maximus VI Gene motherboard and I am using the on board sound to power my microphone and headphones.

 

Recently I had a microphone that was just not cooperating with me. It was an extremely cheap one so I understand that. It would have static and sound terrible for those who I was talking to.

 

That is understandable. 

 

After that I decided to spend a bit more money and got myself an Antlion ModMic 4. People have been telling me it sounds better, but still has static and background noise. Recently, the microphone has died, as far as I know as now it doesn't even pick up sound in Windows or any program and I have tried messing with settings.

 

Anyway, I have 2 questions. 

1. Could it be my motherboard on board audio chipset that is causing my microphone to play up?

2. If I buy a proper desktop microphone, that runs off USB, would it still have the same issues? I was thinking something along the lines of this: http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/wired_mics/a0933a662b5ed0e2/

 

I don't want to spend too much money, but I am happy to spend around $150~ AUD at most if I can.

 

If there is any other information you need to know I will try to provide it.

 

Thanks for reading! 

[TacoSenpai]

1 minute ago, xWhitterS494 said:

Hey guys.

 

I have currently got an Asus Maximus VI Gene motherboard and I am using the on board sound to power my microphone and headphones.

 

Recently I had a microphone that was just not cooperating with me. It was an extremely cheap one so I understand that. It would have static and sound terrible for those who I was talking to.

 

That is understandable. 

 

After that I decided to spend a bit more money and got myself an Antlion ModMic 4. People have been telling me it sounds better, but still has static and background noise. Recently, the microphone has died, as far as I know as now it doesn't even pick up sound in Windows or any program and I have tried messing with settings.

 

Anyway, I have 2 questions. 

1. Could it be my motherboard on board audio chipset that is causing my microphone to play up?

2. If I buy a proper desktop microphone, that runs off USB, would it still have the same issues? I was thinking something along the lines of this: http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/wired_mics/a0933a662b5ed0e2/

 

If there is any other information you need to know I will try to provide it.

 

Thanks for reading! 

Thats a great quality mic for the price.  Pretty light and compatible with many shockmounts and boom arms helps that its small and not heavy.  As far as background noise goes I would recommend getting a pop filter or wind foam screen (they are like 5-10 dollars) and turning down the gain on the mic about halfway.  The thing with these higher end cardioid ones especially is that they will pick up alot of background noise if the gain is set too high.

[TVwazhere]

10 minutes ago, xWhitterS494 said:

2. If I buy a proper desktop microphone, that runs off USB, would it still have the same issues? I was thinking something along the lines of this: http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/wired_mics/a0933a662b5ed0e2/

As an owner of a blue yeti, If I had to do it all over again, I'd probably get this mic. It's lighter, more compact, cheaper by about $15, etc. I dont even use the different settings other than cardioid anyways...

[TacoSenpai]

19 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

As an owner of a blue yeti, If I had to do it all over again, I'd probably get this mic. It's lighter, more compact, cheaper by about $15, etc. I dont even use the different settings other than cardioid anyways...

Agreed.  Plus its lighter and more compatible with other shockmounts and boom arms.  While the Yeti has multiple settings and comparable quality you're pretty much restricted to using the radius II shockmount and the Rode PSA 1 boom arm.

[TVwazhere]

6 minutes ago, LordTaco42 said:

Agreed.  Plus its lighter and more compatible with other shockmounts and boom arms.  While the Yeti has multiple settings and comparable quality you're pretty much restricted to using the radius II shockmount and the Rode PSA 1 boom arm.

well actually I got this shock mount and a $15 arm and cranked the s%!& out of the plastic T handles, and it holds for the most part. Definitely not ideal though, as I had to go without a shock mount for a year

[Tempest_Spectra]

Thanks for the replies guys. Appreciate it. I will buy that one then!

 

Thanks for the advice too, on the background noise scenario. To be honest, I don't know too much about audio so I wouldn't have even thought to do that.

 

Cheers guys!
 

[Tempest_Spectra]

Also, if it runs off USB, would it still be powered by the on board audio of the motherboard? Or is it only microphones that are plugged in via 3.5mm?

 

Sorry if this sounds dumb, but I don't really know much about this stuff as I mentioned before.

 

[AAJoe]

Hello @xWhitterS494

 

Sorry you're having trouble with the ModMic! So absolutely #1 - We offer a 1 year warranty (2 in Europe!) so don't throw your cash away yet - we can fix your ModMic issue! 

 

The noise you're getting from your motherboard is what is known as either white noise or a ground loop problem. Depending on the severity these can USUALLY be fixed with a cheap USB adapter. Until recently for AUS we recommended the Sabrent USB adapters, however in Jan of 2016 Sabrent secretly changed their chipset without telling anyone, causing a massive quality loss.

 

That being the case we now recommend the Syba USB adapter, which costs about 5-7 USD here in the states.

 

As to why your ModMic died that is a separate problem. Please reach out to our customer service at CustomerService at AntlionAudio.com directly. I can also help if you drop me a PM.

 

The LTT forum is a great resource, but don't be afraid to contact us directly. Our job is to ensure your mic sounds exactly like it does in the reviews you see of our product, and it can be done (usually fairly cheap)!  

[anothertom]

5 hours ago, AAJoe said:

The noise you're getting from your motherboard is what is known as either white noise or a ground loop problem.

Sorry, but white noise is an actual thing, and in and of itself is not problematic, and sounds very much different to a ground loop, hopefully you meant electronic interference.

 

What's more likely, especially with a modmic style product is that it's not producing a balanced signal, and your cable is run near your other peripheral cables (including monitor power, maybe?) and as such interference becomes a problem, which would sound similar to but has a different solution to, a ground loop.

 

If the modmic did infact output a balanced signal, I might be very impressed. (And if not, I might suggest that as some r&d...)

 

@xWhitterS494 by background noise do you mean it is picking up the ambient noise in the room, or it isn't creating a noisy signal? If it's the former, then you won't want to put a sensitive condenser mic (like the at2020) in it as it will become worse, either a headset mic or a dynamic vocal mic (sm 57 or 58) would be a better option and technically you could get away without an additional audio interface.

 

if it's electrical noise then you'all want to improve the interface with the computer, so using balanced connectors and connections, using a proper audio interface, as well as checking for ground loops (which is when different components are referencing different ground levels [which should be 0V] and causing flow over the ground connections, which is bad).

[AAJoe]

@anothertom you're right, I should have said white noise caused by EMI, so lazy typing on my part. While it does sound different from a ground loop, my thought is I can't tell what the OP is hearing so I am trying to cover the most likely possibilities. 

 

As for the balanced vs. unbalanced cable / signal, the ModMic does not use a balanced cable because... well, doing so wouldn't make sense since it does not terminate in an XLR connection and the electronics for converting a balanced signal would be either large or expensive. In theory you could balance the signal at the source and then convert the balanced signal to unbalanced 3.5mm at the end, but doing so would be impractical at best.

We are working on an XLR ModMic, but I have no details I can share about how it will work at this time . 

 

Based on the conversations I have had with our audio engineers, the short ModMic cable is unlikely to pick up a lot of problems in most cases and situations. The cable in this case is incredibly unlikely to be the cause of the problem @xWhitterS494 is having. Not impossible, mind you, it has happened before (once, to my knowledge) where the cable's proximity to another was found to be the source of audible noise.