Seriously, the microphone built into your laptop, your phone, your earbuds, or whatever is fairly lacking. Even as the cameras built into some of these devices have improved significantly over the last five years, their microphones generally lag behind.
It’s bad enough to make most of the people I video chat with every day sound like drunken, word-slurring robots about to fail the Voight-Kampff test. Whether you’re interviewing for your next job (hang in there), chatting with coworkers, or recording yourself for video or live streams, even this inexpensive, easy-to-set-up mic can drastically improve how you sound.
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The Blue Snowball Ice is what I use, and though it’s rarely on sale, it’s still worth a look. Or in this case, a listen.
a massive improvement for a little cash
One of my friends is a professional audio engineer who’s got a recording studio built into his home. We call it the bunker. Given that he does it for a living and has built up a résumé of work that still impresses me five years into our friendship, the equipment in there is seriously impressive.
The Blue Snowball Ice isn’t something you’d find in his studio. Neither would you find it on the desks of the more casual audiophiles I know. Those looking for truly premium microphones are usually looking at larger microphones with XLR connections rather than USB cables. And they’ll pay for it, as those microphones cost in the triple digits.
They often scoff at microphones like the $40 Logitech Blue Snowball Ice that connect easily via the common USB port, but most people don’t need to spend hundreds to sound significantly better than their devices’ built-in microphones.
They don’t need the hassle of buying and setting up a hub adapter so that they can plug in an XLR cable, nor dedicate a bunch of desk real estate to a large mic. You can get a major improvement in your audio quality for not a lot of cash or hassle with the Logitech Blue Snowball Ice, and that’s realistically all most people need.
