Quote:

Hi,

I was given excellent advice on this forum recently about adding vocals and naturally enough it included using a mic. The only mic I had in the house was an old Victor one that came with a now-retired cassette recorder. This one achieved only one green light on the scale so I went to a store and perused the mics.



Hi Chris,

That mic should be able to drive any proper Mic Preamp.

But it sounds like you may have been plugging the mic directly into a soundcard's Line Input. That would only light one green light with *any* mic.

What you probably need, and need to know, is that you need a proper *Microphone Preamp* to go between the mic and the soundcard's Line Input. Use of the computer's Mic Input is not recommended for recording music as they are noisy and are also designed for those little headset mics and stick mics like the store showed you, which aren't great for singing music either.

You can find a Mic Preamp or you can find a small recording mixer that has built in mic preamps these days for a small cash outlay due to the proliferation of music making supplies for the PC.

Your problem right now sounds like one of gain and not the mic itself, although you can certainly find better mics at the store and should, the mic designed for a cassette recorder is a dynamic mic that can typically turn in a better job than its plastic housing or the like depicts. --If it has the right electronics between it and your soundcard. The mic level cannot drive Line Level, as you have found out.

**Note: It might also be the case that the cassette mic is High Impedance, in which case it wouldn't be a proper mic for home recording to PC anyway. If it is Low Impedance, and most are, it should work okay with a proper mic preamp or mixer, though.


--Mac

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