What microphone should I buy?

[Kriko]

Yeah i agree.

Conclusions:

A mice in the 100$ range (e.g Shure SM57), a Behringer mixer+preamp (UB502 or higher) and a EMU 0404 + some various cables and maybe a stative for the mice. I feel this little setup is a good place to start out with for some homestudio lownoise recording. Is there anything else that I should be aware of?

Another question: When I've played on a keyboard via the PC:s internal gameport/midiport, there's a noticable latency/lag. Is it faster with a better soundcard? (Im suspecting this)

[zircon]

MIDI latency is due to the drivers you are using. Better soundcards with better ASIO drivers will allow you to reduce the latency (by reducing the sample buffer) without using too much CPU power. With typical sound cards, the default drivers are not very good - you can't get small buffers/low latency without really taxing the CPU. The 0404 has excellent ASIO drivers on the other hand.

[Kriko]

Ah okay. Thanks for your input. What about the Audiophile 2496 then? At my local dealer the Audiophile 2496 and Emu0404 were the exact same price. I kinda' liking the 2496;s connectors setup better. What's the main difference between them?

Oh and by the way, is there anybody here who have recorded something with the equipment (or equally) we're discussing here? (SM57, Adk A51, 0404, Ub502 etc). Well there is cerainly, but I would very much appreciate if somebody wants to share an audioclip just to I know what i roughly can expect from this.

Thanks to y'all

//Kriko

[Souliarc]

Oh and by the way, is there anybody here who have recorded something with the equipment (or equally) we're discussing here? (SM57, Adk A51, 0404, Ub502 etc). Well there is cerainly, but I would very much appreciate if somebody wants to share an audioclip just to I know what i roughly can expect from this.

Thanks to y'all

//Kriko

Malcos has his album free for download. I'm not sure what parts were recorded live though. Darangen, i'm guessing has the SM58, so check out his mixes for the guitar work and vocals. Unknown actually has a lot of vocals in his recent album, but i'm not sure what mic he uses.

Also realize though, that these artists most likely apply EQ, reverb, compression and the like, so the sounds are not dry. Different setups will provide different results as well.

[Kriko]

Thanks. I'll check those out.

Eq and stuff yeah. When Iv'e done recording on my crappy built-in soundcard I've had to decrease the higher frequenzies (12k+) pretty hard just to get rid of all the noise :/. I will probarly be able to get a better soundcard very soon.

[zircon]

For noise removal, get Audacity. Record a few seconds of silence (w/ the noise) and then use the "Noise Removal" function, which takes a clip of the noise, phase inverts it, and copies it across the whole waveform. This will cancel out the vast majority of the noise while adding minimal artifacts. This is what I did with VGDJ before I got a new mic.

[Kriko]

Thank you all guys. I can now confirm that this setup is great and a good place to start out with.

Btw if you ever gonna use a condenser microphone, go with the Ub802 mixer. The price difference is negligible and you get one more mic-input.