i am also looking for a microphone to start doing some content creation.. one of them i was looking at is the samson g track pro which has a 1/4" input jack on the back to monitor instruments into the microphone... im wondering if that'd work as a headphone amp too.. if so, that'd kill two birds with one stone
I had a look at the specs, etc., of this mic. It's effectively a bunch of units built into the mic itself: A mono mic, an analogue mic pre-amp, an ADC, a simple 2 channel mixer and a headphone amp. The 1/4" input jack is an input, not an output, it's for inputting an electric guitar or mono line level instrument (such as a hardware mono synth). This input and the mic input can then be "mixed" relative to each other and output (through USB) as either a mono mix or as 2 separate mono channels, with the mic input on one channel and the instrument input on the other. However, in addition to the 1/4" input jack, it also has a standard 1/8" (3.5mm) mini-jack output, routed through a built-in headphone amp, to allow you to monitor the live output (mic, instrument or the mix of the two) with headphones. This "mic" does therefore work as a headphone amp but only for the mic's inputs, so you can't use it as a general purpose headphone amp because you can't send a signal to it.
There's a few points in the marketing you should be aware of:
1. It states the mic/unit has "
24bit, 96kHz resolution": - This is misleading because that's just the format of the USB output file, NOT the actual resolution of what that output file contains! The mic itself is actually specified to 20kHz and although the SNR (dynamic range) is not specified, it's unlikely to be much more than about 60dB and possibly less. So although the output file format is 24bit/96kHz, the actual resolution is effectively more like 10bit/40kHz.
2. It states "
1/8" stereo output and high quality headphone amplifier": - The 1/8" headphone jack output is stereo but the actual signal it outputs is not stereo, it's dual mono. Additionally, "high quality" is a relative term and, it's specified as 16ohm impedance (85mW @ 32ohm), which should be OK for most headphones but you should check you particular ones.
3. As is typically the case with consumer recording equipment, it's actually marketed as "
professional" recording equipment and implies that it's suitable for commercial recording studio use, which is not the case. You're effectively getting a number of different units in a single mic housing and at it's low price point, some of them are going to be quite poor quality. This probably won't affect the ADC but will likely audibly affect the mic itself, the mic pre-amp, the mixer and the headphone amp.
Having said all the above, this mic/unit will probably be fine for your content creation, depending on what content you're talking about and how you intend to record it.
... if the line-in can handle stereo, it'd be interesting to record audio after its gone through the surround sound processing
No, the line-in is not stereo, it's only mono and so is the output (1 or 2 mono channels). And, if you decide to buy a different, stereo interface/mic then I would advise applying any processing after you record, not before.
G