Need Help/Advice with Audio Quality

[Lanceo90]

Greetings, everyone!

I'm a let's player, I wanted to try to improve my audio quality this year, so I got a standalone mic with pretty good reviews. Thing is, it sounds worse. So I'm looking for advice on what I could do to make it sound better.

For reference, I was using the mic on this previously: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826104840

And this is my new mic: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16836431002

Here's an example of how it sounded, with a noise gate set with a -40dB close threshold and a -36 open threshold : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znIxoBNcxno&list=UUI702XKOlF_6RQ97h93lfSw

Here's how the mic sounds, with no noisegate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCQblXbmxP4&list=UUI702XKOlF_6RQ97h93lfSw

How it sounds with the noisegate settings from before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn1hvo-Ohp4&list=UUI702XKOlF_6RQ97h93lfSw

[mike20021969]

You buy a Mic for less than $50 that looks like a metal tennis ball and wonder why it sounds like garbage?

To get decent sound you need a better budget (and mic) than that.

[Cornucopia]

A bigger difference would likely be the DISTANCE between the mic and your mouth (particularly WRT signal vs. noise/echo). In the former, it was ~1.5 inches. In the latter, it was probably at least 5 inches. You're also probably adding multipath echo/reflections and their ensuing comb-filtering.

BTW, audio engineers, like myself, would probably tell you that you're not going to find ANYTHING decent for less than ~$100USD. But in general, those Blue mics are decent bang for your buck. In this case, you're paying more for the A/D & USB interface than you are for the mic capsule tech & pre-amp, so figure that portion as really only being worth equivalent of ~$22USD.

Scott