Need High Quality Headworn Microphone for Podcasting

Any particular reason why it needs to be headworn? You could get much better quality for the money by going with a desktop mic. In your price range, for a desktop mic I'd recommend something like an Audio-Technica ATR-2500USB ($99) or Shure PG27-USB ($199). Both connect via USB and have dedicated, high-quality mic preamps.

If you really need a headworn solution, then think about something like an Audio-Technica PRO 8HEx ($159), but you'll want a dedicated mic preamp to go with it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LINKUZZZ 

Like this unit a friend suggested:

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/AudioBuddy.html

Yep, that would work great. If you want even simpler/less expensive, this would be a good choice (especially since it's only $50): http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/302USB.aspx

The problem is that there are not too many 3.5mm headworn mics that are particularly good as is. There's the Sennheiser ME3 EW (needs modding), along with its knockoff clone. Beyerdynamic Opus 54 should work if rewired. Technically any headworn mic that lists "1.5v-9v" voltage should work with soundcards that provide bias voltage within that range, but obviously YMMV.

Another downside to this approach is that soundcards do not preamp well at all. You'll have quite a bit of noise.

If you go for headworn mics that have XLR connectors (48v phantom powered), you'll need some sort of an interface or preamp. Emu 0404 is popular here, but any interface will do. A reasonable standalone preamp is the m-audio dmp3. With this route you'll have a lot of clean gain, as long as your interface or preamp doesn't completely suck, and you have some quite nice native options, such as the AKG c420/c520 and Shure Beta 53/54.

I had a bit of the same dilemma, but for convenience purposes I went with a broadcast headset for gaming/voice chat with decent music capability. Sennheiser, AKG, Beyerdynamics all have nice options there that are based on popular headphones here.

In that price range you can also have a Samson Airline 77 from ebay for a little over $200, where the receiver does the preamping and would in turn go into line in on a soundcard. Or an AKG C555L + AKG MPAVL + Roland Tri Capture (or similar interface).

I'd just make sure that if you do go for something, that you have a way to return/resell it if needed, as it might not meet your needs for whatever reason.

The C555L has rather fantastic and almost flat frequency response (for a cardioid mic), especially if you compare it to the WH20 which is all over the place. It's also extremely sensitive (35 mV/Pa!) while still having high SNR. This overall means that you won't need to crank up the gain (higher gain = more noise in preamp) as much.

ME3 EW doesn't seem to have much in the way of published specs, so difficult to compare against that. In terms of comfort, you'd want the slimmest profile, but you'll still have the mic boom to contend with, so you'll still probably have some sort of earcup separation, unless they're huge and soft (giggity), like the ATH-A(D) series or somesuch. You definitely don't want a large bulky thing on the side near the ear like the WH20.

As far as interfaces go, I read really good things about the quad capture, and tri capture seems to share some of the specifications. Roland in general is known for very stable hardware and drivers as well.

Also, have you seen the ModMic mentioned? Only found out about it today in another post. It's certainly no C555L though :p

The AKG MPAVL adapts a mini XLR plug that's on the C555L to standard XLR, which is what the tri-capture provides along with phantom power (48V).

What the tri-capture provides: INPUT1 (Mic) jack (XLR type, balanced, phantom power DC 48 V, 10mA Max)

What the C555L manual wants (relevant portions): For 9 to 52 V universal phantom power. Plug the mini XLR connector on the microphone cable all the way into the miniXLR socket on the connecting cable of the MPA V L. Connect the MPA V L to a balanced XLR microphone input with phantom power and switch the phantom power on.

As a side note, they're really charging too much for it since C555L is already natively 9-52V, so all it seems to do is adapt one plug into another, probably without any extra circuitry. Usually these types of adapters for other mics step the voltage down from 48V to <9V, but this one appears to just be a dumb adapter for $ludicrous (yay pro audio ripoff). Of course, there's not much alternative other than making your own plug for the C555L which might not work for whatever odd reason, along with voiding the warranty. /rant

BTW, these types of mics work great with IEMs for obvious reasons.