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Shoot Review: Blue Snowball

Sep 1, 2006 12:00 PM, Reviewer: S.D. Katz

Condenser microphone lets you plug and play.

Without even mentioning audio software, Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, and lots of other video apps let you record audio directly into the program. Podcasting alone is a good reason to have a high-quality mic for your laptop or workstation. Until recently, there have been no serious USB mics.

Any number of companies might have produced a quality USB mic, so it's surprising that Blue Microphones, a company that makes the highest of the high-end mics, has come out with an affordable product for what is essentially the semi-pro and amateur market. While there is no reason why a USB mic shouldn't be used to record Dylan or Shakira, chances are most professional musicians are not plugging a mic into a USB port to record tracks.

Most filmmakers using shotgun mic or lavaliers don't know about Blue, but they're the cat's meow in studio recording. The founders Skipper Wise — a jazz musician, record producer, and sound engineer — and Martins Saulespurens began restoring vintage microphones, and over the course of several years, decided to make their own mics with a goal to design versatile recording systems that have a unique sound. Over the past decade, this has evolved into a series of microphones that are hand-made and generally very expensive. With both quality and price up in the clouds, Blue microphones have acquired considerable cachet in the recording industry.

This brings us to the Snowball, the company's first low-priced microphone. You can thank Skipper Wise's daughter for this act of generosity. One day while she was recording in Apple GarageBand, the issue of mic quality came up. She wondered, rather reasonably, why there are no high-quality mics for the thousands of savvy digital artists starting out. Skipper thought his daughter was on to something, and the Snowball was born. The big round shape came about because Wise is also an avid softball player.

That's the background. Now here's the product: The Snowball is a condenser microphone, but it does not require a battery or phantom power because power is provided by the USB connection. The round-shaped mic is a little smaller than a softball and sits on a 6in.-high tripod stand. The ball head rotates on the stand with a limited range of motion. With the stand on my desk next to the keyboard, I was able to point the head at my guitar and banjo for test recordings, but you might be better off attaching the snowball to a full mic stand with a boom arm. There is also an isolation mount for the Snowball ($59.95), which is a good idea since the tripod is likely to sit on your desktop with various vibrating hard drives or other gear (more about this later).

While some Blue mics have up to nine distinct patterns, the Snowball offers two: cardioid and omni. The patterns for the Snowball are selected with a three-position switch on the back of the mic. Position one is cardioid, two is cardioid with a 10db pad, and position three is for omnidirectional recording. The 10db pad refers to attenuation — basically, the sensitivity of the microphone. You turn the switch to position three for close-up loud vocals to avoid overloading the mic.

There are ways to measure the audio characteristics of a microphone using waveform analysis usually based on the assumption that a mic should have a flat response over a wide range of frequencies. In other words, a good mic has little coloration or personality. But what decades of research shows is that all recording and playback gear has a personality, and most audiophiles now embrace the idea that tubes, electronics, and digital processing all have sounds that are right or wrong depending on what you like. Informed preferences also consider flat and wide response, but with the understanding that numbers alone don't tell the whole story.

My test of the Snowball is largely subjective. Since 99 percent of PC mics are low-priced instruments, the difference between the Snowball and the competition is not subtle. I compared the Snowball to a Logitech noise-cancelling USB desktop microphone (P/N 980186-0403) that is a perfectly respectable product for use with Skype or podcasting, but at $29.95 makes no pretense that it is a precision recording instrument.

Here's my subjective report: I recorded my voice and two acoustic instruments into Sound Studio with the Logitech and the Snowball. The Logitech was noticeably lacking in the midrange and lower register, a response that made my voice sound thin and nasally. Since I'm not known for my sonorous baritone, this mic did nothing to enhance my short reading from Coleridge's poem, Khubla Khan. By comparison, the Snowball produces a very rich, almost compressed sound that evenly handled my vocal dynamics (such as they are). The Snowball also handled volume changes more smoothly, as well as changes in register. Again, it was as if the signal was lightly compressed. The cardoid pattern of the Snowball in setting one (no 10db pad) did a good job suppressing room noise of the Snowball with the switch set to position one (no 10db pad). Understand that most rooms that house PCs are filled with all sorts of fan and spinning hard disk noise, so the cardioid pattern is a must.

When I recorded two acoustic instruments, the Logitech seemed to favor certain strings, giving my 30-year-old Martin D-18 acoustic guitar an uneven sound, while the Snowball was warm and full in the mid- and low-range. Of course, I was able to process the sound with a 10-band equalizer and add compression to the signal captured by the Logitech, but I found I had more signal to play with using the Snowball. Compressing and favoring the mid- and low-range on the Logitech was an improvement over the raw sound, but not without a vaguely muffled quality. No doubt, more experimenting or a more knowledgeable sound engineer might produce better results, but with little or no post processing, the Snowball sounds far more even-tempered and, well, expensive. This may not be what you are trying to convey when podcasting, but if you are recording music and don't have a Ramones aesthetic in mind, the Snowball is going to give your recordings a richer, more professional sound. The Snowball will definitely give podcasters a sound of authority rather than that of an amateur.

This is a very good product that costs about $100 more than a cheap mic with greatly improved quality and versatility. The street price of the Snowball (with desktop mic stand and USB cable included) is a little over $150, but this is easily justified if you do any music recording or narration for your docs or video work. The mic is also suitable for studio use, although you'll have to figure out how to connect USB into your mixer. That's the one paradox of a high-quality USB mic: All other studio gear is setup for a conventional XLR connector or phone jack, while USB means you are in close proximity to a noisy computer and likely in a room without noise dampening.

One other nice aspect of the Snowball: It's plug and play. Out of the box, the Snowball plugged into my keyboard and was ready to go. You can go into System Preferences to raise or lower the gain, but Blue's universal driver worked instantly on my G4 and G5 without my having to choose an input device.

This is a well-made product that works as promised. Anyone doing down-and-dirty sound on the desktop will be very surprised how good impromptu recordings can sound with the Snowball. Highly recommended.

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bottomline

Company: Blue Microphones Westlake Village, Calif.; (818) 879-5200 www.bluemic.com

Product: Snowball

Assets: Professional sound, plug-and-play ability, does not require battery or phantom power.

Caveats: Expensive for a PC mic.

Demographic: Semi-pro and amateur digital recording artists.

PRICE: $159

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.