C01U USB Studio Condenser Mic

[kevdo]

This mic is getting good writeups (see: http://www.macintouch.com/samsonc01u.html ) Also, since I'm podcasting off my Powerbook, this has appeal since it would in theory eliminate the need to purchase an iMic and/or mixing board.

I'm currently using the built-in mic on my Powerbook so clearly I'm not producing pro-quality sound. I think the built-in actually sounds pretty good but also also picks up mouse-clicks and keyboard presses. I'm assuming this mic would be a big step up in quality -- with minimal hassle.

Anyone have experience with this, especially with direct recording into GarageBand? Any thoughts are most appreciated. Thanks folks.

[anotherquizshow]

You may already have seen/heard this review:

http://www.podsqod.com/2005/08/22/podsqod-7-mxl-drk-samson-c01u-review/

Although I don't have experience wiith it, I'm sure recording into GarageBand would be fine.

Michael

[kevdo]

That is very helpful. Thank you.

[Fil]

I bought one a few weeks back and have used it on Ep 103 and 104 of the Vagusnet.com Podcast.

I'm not tech'd up on the audio side at all so I just wanted something I could plug into the laptop and go.

There are probably settings to fiddle with but I've found my C01U to be a little dull and not as rich with my voice as the old Plantronics headset I was using.

However, for ease of use and price it beats every other.

The C01U isn't out over here in the UK yet and those that will be stocking it are aiming to retail for £89.99 - I got mine for £55 from ebay - brand new and including shipping. Luckily I got away without paying import tax.

If you compare Ep 102 with 104 I think you'll easily notice the difference. 102 was recorded with the Plantronics headset, 104 with the C01U

[caribiner23]

My experience may not help you in your situation, but it might prove helpful to others who are planning on buying the Samson C01U.

I bought one of these after reading reviews and hearing Roger McGuinn talking about it on the TWiT podcast. it sounded pretty good (better than the built-in mic on my iBook or the Labtec headset I'd been using), so I decided to buy a second C01U and use either GarageBand or WireTapPro to record the program.

After bringing the second mic home, I connected it to my iBook and went to Audio/MIDI setup and created an aggregated device with the two mics. Then I opened WireTapPro and used the aggregated device as input.

Both mics worked. So far so good.

Then I noticed the mic that was feeding the right channel started buzzing very badly. I went into the Aggregate Device Editor again and clicked the "Resample" button. The buzzing went away.

I also noticed that the applet from Samson's website stopped working as soon as two mics were connected. I guess it gets confused when it finds more than one device connected.

After some more testing, I realized that one channel recorded significantly louder than the other. And I could find nowhere to adjust the volume of each channel, even in the Aggregate Device Editor.

I killed WireTapPro and tried this with GarageBand. GarageBand's "Preferences" panel would not open for me at all while there were two Samson mics connected. I'd click it and nothing would happen. If I removed one of the mics and restarted GarageBand, "Preferences" came up fine.

At this point, I stopped messing around with the iBook and plugged both mics into my XP machine and fired up Adobe Audition. After a couple minutes of playing around with it, both mics were recognized and it worked just fine.

My preference was to get this working on my iBook, since it's a more portable form factor, so I spent the better part of the next few days trying over and over to get both mics working simultaneously. I had zero success.

I was a bit blown away that this worked right out of the box on an XP machine, yet despite all the cajoling and tender words the Mac simply didn't work with this solution.

I emailed Samson for tech support and they said they were only available to discuss this during business hours, and they couldn't help me troubleshoot via email. Since I work during the day, this meant I could not get tech support unless I brought all the equipment to my office and worked on it while I was supposed to be working at my job.

For me, the situation hit the threshold of diminishing returns. I wanted to get this to work, but I really needed to concentrate on the other aspects of getting the podcast up and running. And frankly, this thing called Real Lifeâ„¢ takes up a lot of my time. :-)

I decided to go with a different solution involving a more traditional approach with an M-Audio MobilePre and two Digital Reference mics, and it works perfectly on both the iBook and XP machine.

Two very lucky people each got an almost brand-new Samson mic for a steal on eBay a few weeks ago.

All that said, the Samson C01U will be a very good solution once the bugs are worked out.

Good luck!

4th Time Around Podcast! (http://www.4thtimearound.net)

[Andy Parnell]

Although I'm using a different Condenser mic, MXL DRK, I'd imagine you can hear the apple mouse clicks regardless as most condenser mics pick up a lot of little noises like this. I think you'll continue to experience mouse clicks with the new mic. I do continue to experience mouse clicks. I've decided to go back to using the track pad (makes it much more silent) and eliminate the mouse when recording sound.

However, what I used to get was a lot of echo effect when using my ibook built in mic. That goes when you get yourself a condenser mic I've noticed. You stop sounding like you're in a cave and the sound quality goes up I feel.

Andy

[rookiee]

This mic is both good and bad in different aspects of its functionality. I'm using Windows XP.

GOOD: The thing is ultra simple to install. No mixer, no pre-amp/phantom, no need to balance using XLR connectors. Simple, simple, simple. A free USB port is required, obviously.

BAD: Since it's a USB device, it depends entirely on your recording software to support the device, meaning if you need your operating system's default audio-in device to be your soundcard (and not the mic), and your recording software doesn't have the ability for you to manually select your audio-in device, you're SOL.

GOOD: The thing is crisp and clear and has great vocal response. The sensitivity can be set via windows' built-in recording volume control. Since it is its own audio device, it leaves your audio card to be open to whatever inputs you need, thus you can have two inputs; your Samson, and your soundcard; great for configuring your rig for skype calls with dual soundcards.

BAD: Since it is its own audio device, you can't monitor your voice levels via your headphones through your soundcard hardware like you would if your mic was plugged into Mic/Line-In. Again, it is entirely software dependant, and I don't know a single audio software that doesn't have SOME type of buffer delay, meaning you're going to hear your voice lagged by 1-2 seconds. Impossible to work with.

GOOD: If you're using software like Audition that has multi-track recording, you should be able to set up your multiple USB mics into their corresponding tracks. (This is only in theory since I haven't had the opportunity to try this yet, but I don't see why it shouldn't work, assuming the devices don't conflict with each other.)

BAD: There are no digital mixers that support USB audio devices yet (that I know of). This means that if you need to use multiple mics leading to some type of mixer board to handle EQ, etc, this is not the mic for you.

BAD: Like caribiner23 said, for some weird, weird reason, the recording levels on the mic almost always hang on one channel, leaving the other very quiet. In order to compensate for this, it's important to make sure the recording track is set to mono or "left" channel. On rare, random occasions, it DOES work equally on both channels. I wish they'd fix this up. It's rather inane.

BAD: No applet yet available for Windows systems. When it does become available, I'm anxious to find out what abilities it's going to give me to further control the mic inputs. Hopefully it'll provide some way to monitor my levels in my headset. It's direly needed. Edit: Looks like it just came out... (http://samsontech.com/products/productpage.cfm?prodID=1810&brandID=2) Haven't tried it yet.

In conclusion, I'd suggest this mic for people who have simple to moderate setups. This is the first mic of its kind (aside from USB headsets which aren't condensor) so there's bound to be lots of things that will hopefully be addressed in future models. When I bought this thing, the guy said they were selling like hotcakes, so I'm going to assume others will follow in their footsteps. Let's hope they don't try to patent the thing.