Best USB microphones in 2023 (original) (raw)
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trying to improve our audio experience? This article will show our best USB microphone picks. If you have decided that you need a microphone for your set up – whether that’s for podcasting, video conferencing, working from home or even streaming, a quick search on Amazon will reveal plenty of choices. Many cheap microphones will be packed full of dubious online reviews stating how they are the best thing ever and when you actually buy one and it arrives, you will wonder if it just you that is getting awful sound from it.
Things will depend on your system, your room and even what’s in it. You will have seen popular YouTubers no doubt with sheets of foam glued to their walls to dampen the sound. These are the kinds of extremes you will go to if you want that perfect audio, but if you are just looking for a quality boost from the mic on your phone or your laptop, you have come to the right place.
The advent of USB microphones have made things oo much easier. Once the best mics came with simply an XLR connection that you didn’t have a hope of connecting to Windows or macOS without extra equipment such as an audio interface mixer.
These days, plug one in as you would any other peripheral, and with a quick settings change, you will be chatting to your friends or even Cortana within seconds.
Audiophiles will tell you that USB mics can never be as good as a pure XLR connection, and while that may well be the case, for the majority of us, it won’t matter. A good USB mic will be good enough for all the instances above and even things like recoding instruments with a minimum of post-processing.
If gaming is a concern and you want your callouts to be clear and crisp, then check out our review of the best gaming mics.