USB mics also often have headphone jacks, which is another anomaly compared with the analog studio mic world. Each USB mic is essentially its own analog-to-digital converter (DAC), and often with its own gain knob built in (in the analog studio world, that gain knob is often on a different piece of gear entirely, usually referred to as a Mic Pre). Any editing you do at the computer is being done to a signal that has already been digitally processed, with the maximum sampling and bitrate dictated by the microphone. The audio is processed and digitized through the microphone itself instead of at the other end of the cable.
The signal from the mic should be more or less pure, with EQ, dynamic compression, and reverb added later in production.ĭigital mics that use USB cables are a totally different beast. In a typical recording studio scenario, a microphone is an analog piece of gear that sends a signal to a console or computer through an XLR cable (often through a mixer that can handle multiple microphones at once). To start, you should know how most professional microphones function.
