Computer Microphone

[themahon990]

I have a laptop and want to record some acoustic songs on it, the built-in microphone really sucks and im looking to upgrade. Im wanting to spend around $30. Im not trying to get a nice professional quality mic or anything. Can anyone reccomend any mics for me?

[EndSerenading]

[words but I think worth reading]

Most of the quality problems with built in laptop mics or even plugging in decent mics comes from the fact that a standard laptop on-board soundcard is terrible for recording more so than the mic itself being bad (which it is of course). So even with a decent mic it comes out pretty subpar.

In all honesty, even though this is definitely out of your price range ($100), I would suggest picking up something like the Line 6 GX Pod. I've used the same thing (but two levels up from this) in my band for our personal demo recordings while we write for awhile and love it. But for your purposes you could get by with the lowest version easy (the GX).

The reason I suggest this is that my laptop, even with studio quality mics like sm58s stepped down to 1/8"/headphone jack size to go into my laptop sounded pretty crappy. It wasn't a huge deal since we go to professional for actual albums of course but we wanted a little better sound for our writing demos. So I picked up a UX2 and the sound increased 10fold. Of course the UX1 and UX2 are better than the GX since they actually have XLR mic inputs vs just instrument size mic inputs, but even a $15 mic with instrument input/ 1/4" input sounded better through the Line 6 UX2 than the nice SM58 through the crappy built in sound card.

The reason for this is that these Line 6 USB interfaces are actually external soundcards made for recording that bypass your built in one.

**Summary

In most cases when dealing with a laptop and recording it is your soundcard that is more of the problem than the mic. Because of this, 90% of the time:

$30 mic running through a good soundcard (like you can get in the GX Pod) will sound better than a $100 studio mic running into the laptop native soundcard.

[themahon990]

thanks, ill look into the Line 6 gx pod. So just to recap, its basically a soundcard that I plug either a mic or instrument cable into, then i can send it to speakers, or through USB to my laptop. correct?

[EndSerenading]

pretty much. Do not however that the GX Pod only has an instrument size input (no XLR) so a microphone used directly through here would have to be one with a 1/4" instead of an XLR. I am not 100% sure on the speakers as I don't own the GX version. It might only be a USB out.

Once you plug it into your computer you will actually have EQ and effects that you can add to the mic as well. It also has a good solid base of the line 6 modeling amps that a normal POD has so you can plug a guitar straight in and add effects etc if you want.

http://line6.com/podstudiogx/
http://line6.com/podstudioux1/
http://line6.com/podstudioux2/

there are the manufacturer links for you to check out more information. Let me know if you have any other questions. I am not an expert with them but I have been very impressed with my UX2 so far.