That E-MU card is about $30 cheaper than the Echo Mia. It also has pretty good specs: http://www.emu.com/products/product.asp?ca...lSpecifications The only thing I'd be worried about is the fact that the inputs are unbalanced. That will certainly reduce the sound quality and invite more noise into the recording. The Signal-to-Noise ratio is pretty good though. It's probably good for pod-casting. If you wanted to do some professional audio recordings, I'd put the Echo Mia as the higher priority though. But there are other cards out there too. I'm just going off the ones I'm most familliar with.
My uncle has that E-MU card and has had some problems getting the drivers to work with 64-bit OS'. Dunno if you use 64 bit but be mindful if you do :P
Get a Mbox 2 Mini and a SM58. That way you can edit your recordings with pro tools, the industrial standard! I have a MXL 990 (condenser mic) and its really cheep and meant for voice so I would also recommend that. Don't forget a pop filter to get rid of those plosives too.
Alright, the last of the equipment arrived in the mail today. I hooked everything up, including the Echo Mia card in the PC, the XLR-to-1/4" cable connected into one of the 1/4" analog inputs in the card, and the Microphone connected to the other end of the cable. I set up the drivers and such, and everything went smoothly. I am having one issue, however. I am recording on Audacity in Windows XP, and the recorded audio is extremely quiet; I have to amplify it 50-80 decibels just to get it to what I call "normal" volume (where further amplification would cause clipping). As well, because of this, so much amplification results in a lot of resulting noise. Basic noise removal more or less took care of it, but the audio itself sounded slightly less than favorable quality afterward. Does anyone have any suggestions for this? I know that Vista has a mic boost, but I'm afraid that it would pull the same result that amplification achieves: a whole lot of noise.
Not that I know of. I looked at the actual card, and didn't see anything other than the actual ports to plug in to. The drivers for the card comes with a console of sorts that, among other things, lets me change different outputs from -4dB to +10dB, but I had already done that (before posting here regarding the problem). I did find that if I take the grill off the microphone and speak directly into the thing, it's loud enough that amplifying it to acceptable levels didn't introduce any noise (that I noticed). This is fine and all, I know that's not how it's supposed to work, but I can't think of anything else that would get it loud enough. Oh, I should probably mention, thanks a load to those who helped me pick out the appropriate equipment, I really didn't know what I was doing. Your small basket of goodies will arrive in the mail in 5-8 weeks.
http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/article/40-w...ne-preamp-.html have a read of that, it might help (when it mentions condenser mics, it means that condenser mics NEED them, dynamic mics like yours can still generate a small signal without but you'll probably want one - and ignore the bit about phantom power). I've had a little look around and the Echo Mia card doesn't have a built in preamp, which'll be your problem. While this is a good thing in the long term (you get to choose your preamp rather than it being built into the sound card), it's again going to cost some money. Before you go buying one though I'd wait for someone to confirm that this is the best way to go :P
You're going to need something else to plug into that sound card. It sounds like you're not amplifying the mic, but instead amplifying the audio at the end of the pipe-line. I have a little Alesis Multimix 6FX hooked to my Mia. That's where I plug in my microphone, and from the mixer I can use the pre-amp to bring the mic level up. I appologize if that wasn't made clear before. I am pretty sure I mentioned that somewhere, but probably didn't emphasize it enough. My Alesis mixer was bought used (in brand spanking new condition I might add) for $50. You can find mixers that have fewer channels that are even cheaper. An alternative is to buy a little pre-amp direct box, but a mixer would give you a bit more control over the overall sound of the mic.
