doveman
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Apr 8, 2013
- Posts
- 28
- Likes
- 0
At the moment I'm using a ghetto mic I knocked up by taking the boom arm from a £3 headset and replacing the capsule with a Panasonic WM-61A Electret Condenser mic capsule http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Panasonic-WM-61A...=item1c14d3e197 (there was a bunch of useful circuit diagrams on that listing when I bought it but they've disappeared now unfortunately). I couldn't re-use the wires inside the arm, so I've had to wrap new wires around the outside of it.
Then I built a pre-amp (powered off a 5v USB rechargable battery) as I found I had to set the built-in Realtek ALC892 soundcard gain to 30db, which obviously increased the hiss and made it difficult to use the mic for voice recognition. Now I don't need any gain on the soundcard and it's working fairly well but I feel the mic sounds quite thin, like it's lacking presence, body or low-end.
I was considering the ModMic as it's easy to connect to my headset but having watched some reviews of it, I don't feel it sounds much better in uni mode than my current mic. In omni it sounds better and has more body but then people say not to use omni as it will pick up the keyboard/mouse sounds and any other noise in the room and annoy people you're gaming with. I obviously don't want to spend £70 on the ModMic 5 just so I can try both modes and find that only the uni mode is usable and doesn't sound much better than my current mic. Obviously it will look better but I'm not keen on even spending £50 on the Modmic 4 uni model just for aesthetic reasons.
A lot of people seem to feel the Modmic is overpriced for the quality of the mic and it's just the ease of connection (and the fact that there's not really any competition) that makes people pay those prices. So I had a look at possible alternatives.
Bluetooth Headphones, TaoTronics Magnetic Earphones In Ear Earbuds with Mic (Silicone Gel Surface, CVC 6.0 Noise Cancelling Microphone, IPX5 Waterproof, 10 Hours Playing Time) £20 (unfortunately there's only 1 used set available now)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06XXMG6JC/
Plugable USB Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy Micro Adapter (Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Raspberry Pi, Linux Compatible; Classic Bluetooth, and Stereo Headset Compatible) £11.95
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B009ZIILLI/
I was thinking of getting these anyway as I have some telephone conferences coming up and previously I've been using wired earbuds with inline mic, which work fine from a sound quality POV but the cable is restrictive. I do already have a USB BT adapter but it's probably not 4.0 which might impact on the quality. If the mic is decent, maybe I could use it for gaming as well, as the mic just sits around one's neck and I could ignore the earbuds and use my Samson headphones as normal.
LG make something similar but it's considerably more expensive at £37.90. Having read the reviews of the higher range, more expensive LG sets, it seems a lot of people prefer the cheaper HBS-760
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00WE1QYX0/
Even with the LG's I'm not sure the mic sound quality is that great, so the next option would be a lavalier mic, like this Sony ECM-CS3 for £12.64
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0058MJX4O/
although I'd probably need a USB soundcard to avoid the problems that seem inherent with onboard soundcards and mics. In the ModMic review that I watched they compared the AntLion USB soundcard with a cheaper one, I think it was this Sabrent https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sabrent-External-Adapter-Windows-AU-MMSA/dp/B00IRVQ0F8/ and it sounded much better with the AntLion as it delivered higher voltage (they measured it). However they're both quite cheaply made and seem prone to falling apart, so I thought it might be better to buy a Sound Blaster Play 3 for £19.99 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Creative-Sound-Blaster-Resolution-External/dp/B073KTPNDR/ as it extends the soundcard away from the USB socket and thus reduces the strain on it and should hopefully make it last longer.
For the mic the next step up might be this Rode lavalier mic for £43
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rode-Smartlav-Lavalier-Microphone-Smartphone/dp/B00EO4A7L0/
I'm not sure I've heard either of these two particular mics but in general lavalier mics seem to sound a lot clearer than boom mics like the ModMic. However both the Sony and the Rode are Omni mics, so maybe I'd have the same issues with them being unusable for gaming due to picking up too much surrounding noise.
I guess another option might be to try and improve my current mic by building a different pre-amp circuit for it, maybe even boosting it to line level so I can connect it to the line input on my onboard soundcard and avoid the mic input. However if the lack of body is just inherent to these Panasonic capsule mics I don't want to waste time trying to achieve something that's not possible. They're omni mics, so in theory they should sound quite "full" but maybe the sound is negatively affected by the boom arm housing that focuses the capsule towards my mouth and (presumably) blocks the room noise, at least more than some omnis like the ModMic and the lavalier mics?
So that's what I've considered, what would you recommend?
Then I built a pre-amp (powered off a 5v USB rechargable battery) as I found I had to set the built-in Realtek ALC892 soundcard gain to 30db, which obviously increased the hiss and made it difficult to use the mic for voice recognition. Now I don't need any gain on the soundcard and it's working fairly well but I feel the mic sounds quite thin, like it's lacking presence, body or low-end.
I was considering the ModMic as it's easy to connect to my headset but having watched some reviews of it, I don't feel it sounds much better in uni mode than my current mic. In omni it sounds better and has more body but then people say not to use omni as it will pick up the keyboard/mouse sounds and any other noise in the room and annoy people you're gaming with. I obviously don't want to spend £70 on the ModMic 5 just so I can try both modes and find that only the uni mode is usable and doesn't sound much better than my current mic. Obviously it will look better but I'm not keen on even spending £50 on the Modmic 4 uni model just for aesthetic reasons.
A lot of people seem to feel the Modmic is overpriced for the quality of the mic and it's just the ease of connection (and the fact that there's not really any competition) that makes people pay those prices. So I had a look at possible alternatives.
Bluetooth Headphones, TaoTronics Magnetic Earphones In Ear Earbuds with Mic (Silicone Gel Surface, CVC 6.0 Noise Cancelling Microphone, IPX5 Waterproof, 10 Hours Playing Time) £20 (unfortunately there's only 1 used set available now)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B06XXMG6JC/
Plugable USB Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy Micro Adapter (Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Raspberry Pi, Linux Compatible; Classic Bluetooth, and Stereo Headset Compatible) £11.95
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B009ZIILLI/
I was thinking of getting these anyway as I have some telephone conferences coming up and previously I've been using wired earbuds with inline mic, which work fine from a sound quality POV but the cable is restrictive. I do already have a USB BT adapter but it's probably not 4.0 which might impact on the quality. If the mic is decent, maybe I could use it for gaming as well, as the mic just sits around one's neck and I could ignore the earbuds and use my Samson headphones as normal.
LG make something similar but it's considerably more expensive at £37.90. Having read the reviews of the higher range, more expensive LG sets, it seems a lot of people prefer the cheaper HBS-760
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00WE1QYX0/
Even with the LG's I'm not sure the mic sound quality is that great, so the next option would be a lavalier mic, like this Sony ECM-CS3 for £12.64
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0058MJX4O/
although I'd probably need a USB soundcard to avoid the problems that seem inherent with onboard soundcards and mics. In the ModMic review that I watched they compared the AntLion USB soundcard with a cheaper one, I think it was this Sabrent https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sabrent-External-Adapter-Windows-AU-MMSA/dp/B00IRVQ0F8/ and it sounded much better with the AntLion as it delivered higher voltage (they measured it). However they're both quite cheaply made and seem prone to falling apart, so I thought it might be better to buy a Sound Blaster Play 3 for £19.99 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Creative-Sound-Blaster-Resolution-External/dp/B073KTPNDR/ as it extends the soundcard away from the USB socket and thus reduces the strain on it and should hopefully make it last longer.
For the mic the next step up might be this Rode lavalier mic for £43
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rode-Smartlav-Lavalier-Microphone-Smartphone/dp/B00EO4A7L0/
I'm not sure I've heard either of these two particular mics but in general lavalier mics seem to sound a lot clearer than boom mics like the ModMic. However both the Sony and the Rode are Omni mics, so maybe I'd have the same issues with them being unusable for gaming due to picking up too much surrounding noise.
I guess another option might be to try and improve my current mic by building a different pre-amp circuit for it, maybe even boosting it to line level so I can connect it to the line input on my onboard soundcard and avoid the mic input. However if the lack of body is just inherent to these Panasonic capsule mics I don't want to waste time trying to achieve something that's not possible. They're omni mics, so in theory they should sound quite "full" but maybe the sound is negatively affected by the boom arm housing that focuses the capsule towards my mouth and (presumably) blocks the room noise, at least more than some omnis like the ModMic and the lavalier mics?
So that's what I've considered, what would you recommend?
