i was thinking of getting my sister a microphone for christmas, because she likes to record stuff for her sound cloud. she just uses her phone though, usually, and i thought it might be nice to get her some thing maybe low end to mess with. i don't know anything about microphones though, so maybe i could get some suggestions or advice? i'm looking for something that could work with a laptop and maybe doesn't cost too much. since christmas is pretty far away i'm not gonna get ahead of myself and buy something willy nilly with my nonexistant money either, just thought i'd put this out there so i can figure out what i need to be looking for and lessen the chance of getting ripped off or something by someone with a lot of buzzwords attached to their item.
what sort of a budget are you looking at? I'd be happy to do a bit of research for you, see what I can find that's decent :)
thanks! i don't really know if this is a realistic budget or not, but i'd rather not go over $50. my brother agreed to pitch in if i need to go over that but he's really capricious when it comes to money and he'll either want anything he gives all paid back with an insane amount of interest or tell me not to worry about it or really anything in between.
Okay, let's see. This Samson looks decent. Its regular retail price is a bit outside your budget ($60), but it's currently on sale, and I'd bet dollars to donuts that it'll go on sale again between now and Christmas (Black Friday/Cyber Monday is an excellent time to check). Here are a bunch of results between $1 and $50. I haven't looked at them all very closely. I checked out the Tonor ones - they seem to do okay for voice only, not great for instrument recordings. My recommendation would be to look for condenser mics, if your sister records music - a standard desktop mic (for Skype/VOIP) probably isn't going to get her the quality she wants. You're likely to be looking on the upper end of your budget for decent sound quality. :/ Again, check Amazon around US Thanksgiving - there are excellent deals, and often there's free shipping too. :D Alternatively, if you wanted to save up more, I can personally recommend both Zoom recorders and the Blue Yeti microphone. I bought a Blue Yeti a while ago and I've found the quality to be excellent - definitely worth the $150 (shipping included) that I paid for it. I've used a Zoom Q2HD (now discontinued), and the sound quality was really good, even recording from the back of a hall (singer and accompanist at the front). Alas, Zooms cost a pretty penny (upwards of $200), and I haven't even saved up for one of those myself, yet, so.
If you're getting a condenser microphone, you'll probably need a phantom power supply to go with it or the resulting audio will be very quiet. I got one that claimed it didn't need a phantom if it was used with a PC, but it turned out to be lies. Either way, with a laptop, needing extra power for it is probably a safe bet. Take a look into what kind of microphone will work best for recording music -- a cardioid (like the Samson in Kaylotta's first link) is probably what you want? I don't do music, though, so I don't know. But it would suck to get her a microphone and then discover that she needs it to pick up her voice and guitar at the same time, or something, and then the mic you got her doesn't. I actually just reread the OP and discovered I assumed it was about a musician based on absolutely nothing. So if she's doing voice acting or podcasts or something, a unidirectional mic will be best, because it'll avoid picking up things other than her. I have this one, which is decent for $30, but very quiet even with a phantom, and completely inaudible without one. I have heard fantastic things about Blue Yeti, so I second the suggestion that it might be a good idea to save up for one and splurge.
@oph has very good points. :D Also, it's worth noting that the Blue Yeti does cardioid, omnidirectional, bidirectional, and stereo modes. Lotsa bang for your buck.
@Kaylotta @oph just wanted to pop in and thank you for all your help! the one i ended up getting went over really well, she loved it. she's already started recording stuff and is having a lot of fun.
