Many, if not all of you, are familiar with or use Articulate software for eLearning development. In my opinion, their tools are currently unequaled in the industry for rapid creation of top-notch eLearning. For reasons unexplained, my boss is annoyed that Articulate seems to be “the answer to every question” at present, but the reason our customers always ask for Articulate is because the published products are so good. It’s hard to find a more convincing endorsement than that.

I’ve been an enthusiastic Articulate user for several years now. In fact, I was the first in my organization (100,000+ employees) to discover and acquire Articulate – not a painless process. Once people started to see the courses and presentations I was creating with Articulate, word started to get around. Now we have many Articulate users, with more getting on board seemingly every day – not just trainers, but communicators and technical analysts as well. I should be getting a sales commission from the company. But I digress.

Being the de facto “Articulate Guru” for my organization, I frequently field questions from developers in other departments. One of the first questions I’m always asked is “How do I learn this software?” I’ve always pointed them to Articulate’s own documentation, as well as the excellent online community and Tom Kuhlman’s equally-excellent blog.

Some users want (and need) more, and it’s finally arrived: in Patti Shank (a familiar name in eLearning circles) and Jennifer Bircher’s new book, Essential Articulate Studio ‘09. The book is massive at almost 1,000 pages, and those pages are filled with clear, helpful instruction and a huge collection of screenshots. If you’re new to Articulate, or a still-uncomfortable long-time user, this book may be just what you need.

Technical books tend to be either very good or very bad, and I’d rate this one as very good. The layout is logical and the writing style is neither mind-numbingly heavy nor irritatingly light. (I love comedy as much as the next guy, but slapstick technical books just ain’t my thing.) The annotated screenshots are very helpful, as are the clearly-designated tips and notes sprinkled throughout.

The book also comes with a companion CD, which includes trial versions of Articulate software, Articulate’s own documentation and links to the Articulate website. One might ask what’s the point (I certainly do), as you can get all of that information directly from Articulate’s website (and be assured the most recent versions when you do), but the CD is there anyway – for eventual deposit in your local landfill (where it can be discovered by archaeologists 10,000 years from now). The book, however, is a keeper. And at under 30 bucks, a no-brainer.

Buy it from Amazon via my link and I’ll probably get a nickel back or something. If only 10 million of you order it, I can quit my soul-crushing job and start my own eLearning development studio!

So you go ahead and order, and I’ll start packing up my desk and drafting my letter of resignation…

For years, Mac users lagged far behind their Windows-using counterparts in the screencasting department – a sad but undeniable fact. Sure, we had Snapz Pro, which many users still swear by, but ultimately the long-in-the-tooth tool does little but basic capture. Other apps offered some additional functionality, but nothing served up the entire enchilada like, say, Camtasia for Windows.

Everything changed last year with the introduction of ScreenFlow, a beautiful Mac-esque application that provided a full suite of editing tools and effects. TechSmith, the 800-pound gorilla of the Windows screen capture world, had just announced their intention to enter the Mac market, and 18 months later released their much anticipated Camtasia for Mac (an agonizing 8 months later than they had forecasted). Was it worth the wait? Let’s have a look!

Users of ScreenFlow will notice that Camtasia for Mac looks remarkably similar to…ScreenFlow. Which in my book is just fine and dandy – why fix what isn’t broken? I can only thank the gods of software design that TechSmith didn’t try to replicate the interface from Camtasia for Windows, which frankly is an unmitigated mess (I say this as a Camtasia for Windows owner and user). Thankfully they wiped the slate clean for Camtasia for Mac, and this approach paid off beautifully.

Inevitably I’ll want to compare Camtasia to ScreenFlow, but in this review I will refrain from doing so. Watch for a post in the near future in which I’ll compare the two contenders in a head to head battle for screen recording supremacy. Telestream will be releasing ScreenFlow 2 in the next few months, which will make things even more interesting. But back to Camtasia.

Installing Camtasia is a simple “drag to your Applications folder” affair, like most Mac applications. To capture system audio, Camtasia does require the installation of Soundflower, a system extension for OS X, but Camtasia makes this process short and painless.

The first thing you’ll see after launching Camtasia is the recording control panel, and that’s where an initial moment of panic sets in. We Mac users can be a highly discriminating bunch, and we watch for that ferocious attention to detail with an all-seeing eye. And what you see in that initial control panel shows some non-Mac-like sloppiness that makes one fear for the polish of the rest of the app. Note the fuzzed button text and the jagged edges of the record button:

Not a good way to start. While such fit-and-finish faux pas are tolerable (typical?) in the Windows world, Mac users demand a step above. God is, after all, in the details (Mies van der Rohe). Windows users may dismiss such demands as sheer snobbery, but uncompromising quality should be an expectation, not a luxury.

Is this initial stumble indicative of the quality of the rest of the app? Thankfully, no. For the most part, Camtasia for Mac is Mac-tastic joy. Features wise it falls short of ScreenFlow in some aspects and leapfrogs it in others (which, again, I’ll talk about more in an upcoming post), but overall I find Camtasia much more intuitive than ScreenFlow. Effects and editing tools are logically placed and easy to find. Like ScreenFlow, the dark interface helps you focus on the important stuff – your screencast – and not on the editing app itself (Camtasia for Windows could take a lesson here) and gives it that Apple pro app vibe you get in FinalCut and Logic, among others.

Like ScreenFlow, Camtasia for Mac has one capture mode: full screen. Some Camtasia for Windows users may gripe about the inability to capture specific windows or regions, but personally I prefer the full screen approach. Just grab it all and let me choose what I want in the editing process – a level of flexibility that some may underestimate.

Effects are easy to choose, implement and manipulate – just drag and drop the effect you want onto the appropriate spot on your timeline and tweak them to your liking from there. Unfortunately the drag/drop effects elements are unnecessarily ginormous, even on my 24″ display at 1920×1200, which necessitates scrolling through the list. TechSmith could easily make these half the height and retain plenty of visibility while reducing the need to scroll. Note the ability at the top of the list to filter down to a specific effect type: Transitions, Filters and Actions. Nice touch!

A few of the effects fall squarely into the “Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should” category (an area in which PowerPoint is master), primarily the highly-questionable flips, rotates and spins. Most users will wisely shun these effects, but others will be tempted to use them if only because they’re there. And that makes me sad.

Camtasia also provides the basic collection of annotation tools, including text, arrows, boxes and bubbles:

Like the effect tools, the annotation tool elements are also unnecessarily oversized, which will force users with smaller screens to scroll through the list.

There are a few other nits to pick. One flaw I discovered is in the way Camtasia renders text. Text appears in your screencast with an ever-so-slight stroke and some jaggies, and if you’re like me it’s something you will immediately notice and thereafter be unable to ignore. Below is a sample of what text should look like (left) and what it looks like in Camtasia (right). Hopefully this is something TechSmith can fix quickly.

Resizing the canvas appears to be flawed as well. You cannot grab a side handle to resize disproportionately. Do you want your canvas to be 600×100? Too bad, you can’t do it by dragging. Corners, sides, it doesn’t matter – all resize the canvas proportionately. If you want to deviate from the norm you’ll have to enter a numeric value. Frustrating. Particularly under the “record the entire screen” philosophy that Camtasia for Mac adheres to. If TechSmith wants this to be Mac-like (or even computer-like), the side handles should allow you to resize disproportionately while the corners are used for proportionate resizing.

For me one of the biggest shortcomings of Camtasia is the lack of keyboard navigation in the editor. The inability to jump around the video timeline via the keyboard (Home, End, etc.) is a real workflow downer. This needs to be fixed.

One feature with which Camtasia kicks sand in the face of ScreenFlow is SmartFocus, which automatically zooms in on the relevant action, sparing you the time and hassle of doing it manually. A killer feature to be sure.

Sharing your final video is a snap, with Camtasia providing one-click publishing for iTunes, Screencast.com and YouTube.

You can also export to QuickTime with a single click or select another format (AVI, DV stream, etc.) under the Advanced Export option, though I found AVI publishing to be problematic under Snow Leopard. Problematic as in I couldn’t get it to work. At all. Camtasia gave me a progress bar to indicate that things were going swimmingly, but after completing the process there was no AVI file to be found.

Upon completion of the export process, Camtasia gives you this handy little dialog box that allows you to reveal your exported file in the Finder. Another very nice touch.

Ultimately Camtasia for Mac is a beautiful piece of software that is intuitive and enjoyable to use – and bargain-priced at one third the cost of its admittedly more features-rich (but ugly and clunky) Windows comrade. Does it suffer from the typical version 1.0 rough edges? Yes, but not as many as I expected. TechSmith did a fantastic job with this initial release. Despite the need for a little spit polish here and there, a handful of bug fixes, and the addition of a few features found in its primary competitor, ScreenFlow (and perhaps a few from Camtasia for Windows as well), Camtasia for Mac is a solid addition to any Mac-based eLearning developer, presenter, or screencaster’s quiver at a no-brainer price.

A free trial is available, so go grab it, kick the tires, and let me know what you think in the comments section below (good, bad, ugly). Comparisons to ScreenFlow by seasoned users of that application would also be appreciated.

My hat is off to TechSmith for an impressive initial foray into the world of Mac software, and I look forward to seeing how Camtasia progresses, as well as the arrival of other products (ahem, Snagit) they have in the pipeline.

Today I’m reviewing the Samson C03U Recording Pak. This almost-all-in-one (more on that in a bit) solution looks well-suited for eLearning narrators who want high-quality recording on a modest budget.

The C03U is a USB microphone that gives you excellent recording quality while offering the convenience of a plug-and-play USB connection. The Recording Pak is a Samson bundle that includes the microphone, desktop stand, shock mount and USB cable, neatly packed into a nice molded-foam-lined aluminum case for easy storage or transport.

The microphone itself has a solid heft, and its excellent build quality is evident. Unlike my Blue Snowball mic, there’s no plastic to be seen on this baby. A 3-way pattern switch lets you select between omni, supercardioid, and figure-8 pickup patterns, which give you some flexibility in sound control based on your recording environment and situation. The figure-8 pattern, for example, is designed for recording, say, a group of people sitting around a table (if you ever run into such a need in your eLearning audio work).

The stand is short, heavy, and padded with foam underneath. There will be no inadvertent toppling of the microphone with this setup!

Being the type who jumps into a new product without first reading the instructions, I was befuddled by the microphone mount for a minute before I realized you have to remove the Euro adapter before mounting the mic (or the shockmount) to the stand.

This fact is mentioned in the owner’s manual, to my chagrin. A few quick turns with a nickel and the adapter came free, allowing me to mount the shockmount to the stand (and the mic to the shockmount). I did find it odd for Samson to ship the kit with the Euro adapter installed when the Euro adapter does not fit the stand provided in the kit.

Samson missed a golden opportunity by not including some type of pop filter with this kit. Those of us who are amateurs at voice recording have not mastered the art of plosive control, and a pop filter is absolutely essential. Samson could easily have crafted a custom-fitted pop filter for this kit for very little cost. Instead, one must rely on a third-party pop filter, which, as you can see in this photo, may not be (and likely won’t be) an ideal fit. I’m using an MXL metal pop filter, which comes affixed to a fairly large arm mount and a long flexible gooseneck. Too long to be easily maneuvered into the ideal location on the stubby Samson stand. The pop filter tries mightily to rise up and away from the microphone, as the gooseneck is not entirely pliant while it struggles for space to accommodate its excessive length. Fighting with the thing alternates between comical and frustrating, but ultimately ends up just being frustrating.

Not only is the pop filter difficult to situate, but it also poses the issue of where to store it, as there is no place to put it in the molded case. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a pop filter designed for this very kit, with its own storage slot in the case? Why, yes it would! Alas, this is one those head-smacking moments where a manufacturer stopped just short of providing the ideal solution. Samson, please consider designing a custom clip-on pop filter for future kits like this. You are so close to greatness…

The kit also comes with Cakewalk Sonar LE recording software for Windows, which I will ignore for this review as I use GarageBand on my Mac for my narration recording.

Sound quality is very good – close to my current mic of choice, the MXL USB.009, which I reviewed a few months ago. Perhaps a bit less full and a bit more harsh to my admittedly non-expert ears. I’ll let you decide for yourself, via my admittedly non-expert sample recordings below.

Samson C03U

MXL USB.009

In addition to the difficulty of attaching a pop filter, my other niggle with the Samson kit is the height of the mic stand – or perhaps better stated the height of the mic when mounted to the stand. Even with my chair adjusted to its lowest point, I had to hunch over slightly to get good mouth-to-mic placement. The much taller MXL USB.009 mic poses no such problem for me.

Overall, the Samson C03U Recording Pak is an excellent, high quality package for eLearning developers who need a good recording solution without breaking the bank. Had Samson only included a pop filter in the kit, I would have deemed this mic a home run for budget narration recording. Without it, I’ll call it a solid triple. You can pick up the kit for just under the $200 mark from various online retailers.

Might I suggest Amazon?

You don’t plan to keep recording your eLearning narration with that cheap-o headset mic, right? Right???

To start, let me say that eQuixotic is not a hardware/gadget review blog. That said, hardware is used in the creation of eLearning and presentations. Thus, people creating eLearning and presentations purchase hardware, and are often faced with hardware buying decisions. Me, I love to research every product I purchase. Unfortunately, most online reviews are found on retailer sites and consist of precious little substance, ranging from (5 stars) “I LOVE THIS, IT’S THE BEST EVAH!!!” to (1 star) “THIS IS JUNK AND IT SUCKS AND I HATE IT!!!” Sadly, reviews cannot be sorted or filtered by reviewer intelligence (or lack thereof). Thus I often rely on blogger reviews to help guide my purchasing decisions, as bloggers tend to throw some real meat into their reviews.

Unfortunately, I could not find any detailed reviews for the LaCie 2big Quadra external RAID hard drive, so I was forced to purchase on blind faith. To my peril. To spare others my fate, I thought I’d post my assessment.

Now having essentially given away the “ending” of my story, let’s back up and fill in the details, shall we?

The LaCie 2big Quadra is a two-disk external RAID hard drive enclosure. For those of you unfamiliar with RAID, it essentially gives you the option of mirroring your data on two (or more) drives, protecting you from data loss if one of those drives should fail. I like this idea, as I don’t have to rely on two separate external hard drive enclosures (and two FireWire cables, and two power cords) to accomplish the same task. I purchased this drive in the 2 TB configuration (two hard drives, each 1 TB in size) from Dell’s website.

The “Quadra” designation refers to the connectivity options, offering all four standard connections in a single box: eSATA, USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and FireWire 800. Choice is good, particularly when choice includes the fastest options available (eSATA and FireWire 800) as well as the reassurance of universality (USB 2.0 and FireWire 400). When I received the drive and began to unbox it, I realized, to my dismay, that I didn’t own a FireWire 800 cable and would have to rely on FireWire 400. But to my delight, LaCie included all four cable types in the box (USB, FireWire 400 and 800, and eSATA). Bravo, LaCie, Bravo! I was soon in business. Which is when the trouble began. But before I get to that, let’s lay this review out all official like.

When evaluating an item like this, I have three criteria to judge (aside from price, of course):

1. Functionality / Usability

3. Design

I’ll assess the 2big Quadra based on these three criteria. Ready? Let’s go!

1. Functionality / Usability

Um…err….let’s come back to this one.

2. Quality

To say this thing is built like a tank would be an understatement. It is substantially larger than most external hard drives, obviously, as it houses two drives. The body is solid aluminum and heavy. Not only would this thing likely survive a fall from the desk to the floor without a scratch, but it would probably do some serious damage to your floor in the process. I love stuff that feels indestructible, and the 2big Quadra delivers. My old external hard drives look (and feel) like cheap toys next to this thing.

5 stars for build quality. No question.

3. Design

In our modern world of space-sucking digital media, where many gigabytes of audio and video quickly fill our hard drives to capacity, external storage is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. So why is so little attention paid to the design of these devices that clutter our desks? I had four external hard drives on my desk, of varying sizes and design – and they all looked like cheesy afterthoughts. It was a silly looking mess. I spent extra money for a beautiful computer – I really wanted a beautiful external hard drive to compliment it. The 2big Quadra was the only drive I found that fit that criteria. Designed by Neil Poulton, the 2big has an industrial elegance and simplicity that compliments my aluminum iMac. If Apple were to design and build an external hard drive, it would probably look and feel a lot like this one. And that’s high praise indeed. This is a peripheral I am not ashamed to have on my desk. The ribbed aluminum not only looks great, but provides more surface area for heat dissipation, which should reduce the frequency of fan noise. Unfortunately, this is not the case with the 2big Quadra. More on that in a minute.

As beautiful as this drive is, I’m disappointed by Mr. Poulton’s decision to include the Great Blue Glowing Orb (see photo of drive at the top of this review). Sure, it looks cool. Until you turn it on. What is it about electronics designers/manufacturers that makes them think that we consumers like to be bathed in the cold blue light of our gadgets? The light on this thing, which glows whenever the drive is active, illuminates nearly my entire home office at night. Between my microphone, my printer’s illuminated control buttons, and my external hard drive, I don’t need any other office lighting. And that’s not good – particularly when you’re trying to scare yourself silly with a little late night gaming in Left 4 Dead. After awhile, I wanted to take a hammer and smash this cycloptic eye to smithereens. When it comes to superfluous lighting, Mr. Poulton, less is more. In the case of the 2big Quadra, much less. Please. At least give me an off switch for the light (or a convenient cable to cut).

4 stars for the beautiful design, knocked down from 5 stars only for the huge glowing orb.

Now for the really bad news.

1. Functionality / Usability

One would think an external hard drive’s functionality and usability would be a no-brainer. Plug it in, turn it on, and let Time Machine (on a Mac) or the bundled software that comes with the drive (on a Windows machine) do all your backup work for you automatically. Cake, right? Unfortunately, LaCie has seen fit to make this simple task as infuriatingly annoying to the user as possible with a power management and cooling system that seems designed by Satan himself. For an enclosure that is essentially one gigantic aluminum heat sink, you’d think cooling fans would be rarely needed. And you would be wrong. LaCie’s claim on its product page:

The sturdy, aluminum heat sink design—with 60% more surface area for heat dissipation—keeps it quiet and safe.

sounds scientifically rational, but LaCie and I clearly have differing opinions on the definition of the word quiet. The fans on this drive fire up the moment you flip the power switch and continue, vacillating in volume level, almost indefinitely. The power switch is a three-way affair: Off, On, and Auto. The implication of Auto is that the drive sleeps when you don’t need it and spools itself up automatically when you do. Which is how my other external hard drives have always worked. Unfortunately, the 2big Quadra assumes you need it about every, oh, two minutes or so. I have my Time Machine settings configured to back up my data every hour. So I should only be hearing this beast huff and puff every 60 minutes, giving me 59 minutes of peaceful tranquility. Not so. The drive “goes to sleep” (I use the phrase loosely) with a couple of loud clicks, and you think all is well. Two minutes later (not an exaggeration), the drive spools up again and the fans kick into action. Why? I don’t know. The computer isn’t feeding it any data – it has no reason to awake. Sometimes the drive (with noisy fans) spools itself up even if the computer is asleep. Since my office is next to the master bedroom, I have to turn this drive off before I go to bed. I’ve never had to do that with any external hard drive I’ve owned. So why is cooling fan action needed when 1) the surrounding air is a cool 70 degrees, and 2) the drives aren’t actively reading and writing data? I have no idea. They certainly aren’t heat activated, as the air that blows out of the unit is not noticeably warm. If only I were able to change the settings for the fan activation.

How loud is it? If you’ve heard an iMac under full load (say, in the aforementioned Left 4 Dead gaming event), it sounds a lot like that. Why should an inactive hard drive enclosure make as much noise as a 24″ all-in-one computer that has to cool a dual-core processor, LCD display, video card, and hard drive, crammed into the slimmest of spaces, all being pushed to their limits in a graphically-intensive 3D shooter? An explanation escapes me. At least when I’m gaming I have the sounds of shotgun blasts and screaming zombies to drown out the fan noise. But when I’m not gaming, this external hard drive is a noisy little companion that just won’t shut up. The iMac (under normal load) is the faintest whisper – the 2big Quadra is a stiff summer wind.

My good faith assumption would be that I simply have a defective unit. But LaCie’s failure to respond to my question (submitted via their website) about the power and fan cycling, while a previous question about RAID modes was answered promptly, leads me to fear the worst: this is just a bad design. And not just bad design, but unbearably bad design. If you are, like me, someone who needs computing silence (or near-silence), this little beast will drive you quite mad.

Forget narrating an eLearning course while this thing is powered on. I never had to power down my other external hard drives while I recorded narration. They quietly minded their own business. The 2big Quadra, on the other hand, just can’t bear not being the center of my attention.

To design and build such a beautiful peripheral and then destroy it with bad internals is like spiking the ball and doing a touchdown celebration dance on the 1 yard line. You were so close to greatness, LaCie, so close indeed. But the only applause I can offer is the sound of my hand smacking my forehead in utter disbelief.

1 star for Functionality / Usability. Yes, it backs up your data, and it does so quickly. But it makes so much noise while doing so (and while not doing so) that you’ll prefer to just turn the thing off entirely. This drive is going back to Dell post haste. And if they charge me a restocking fee, I’m going to be really upset.

If you detest gratuitous noise (and light) from your computing peripherals, my suggestion is to stay far, far away from the LaCie 2big Quadra. I’m disappointed to have to add this product to my eQuixotic Hall of Shame. If anyone has any suggestions for external hard drives that may meet my criteria, please let me know in the comments section. I doubt I’ll find anything as nice looking and solid as the 2big Quadra, but I certainly hope to find something quieter (and less, um, illuminating).

If the opinions in this review seem a little, er, extreme, realize that it’s due to my absolute loathing of noisy electronics and my frustration with great design that turns out to be only skin deep. I admit, I demand a lot from my stuff. If noisy electronics (and room-illuminating blue lights) don’t bother you, than the 2big Quadra may be a perfect storage solution for you.

Personally, I cannot recommend it.

NOTE: If anyone at LaCie is reading this, thinks I may have had a defective unit, and would like to loan me a review unit for a reevaluation, I would be happy to oblige.

UPDATE 7/6/09: Still no response from LaCie regarding the behavior of the drive, nor a response from Dell regarding my return request. I am preparing for a return nonetheless by doing a 7-pass wipe (secure erase) of this drive to remove my data from it. Which Apple’s Disk Utility estimates will take…2 days 5 hours. With fans (and light) in FULL INTENSITY mode.

Two days of this and I may end up quite mad. Farewell, sanity. I hardly even knew ye.

UPDATE 7/9/09: The noisy beast has been wiped, silenced, boxed, and is on a UPS truck on its way back to Dell (who provided stellar customer service on the matter – thanks Dell!). I should have tossed a pair of earplugs into the box just for grins.

UPDATE 7/12/09: I can’t go without data backup (not even for a week), so I promptly found (and ordered) my replacement drive…the LaCie d2 Quadra. Yeah, I know, I know – once bitten, twice shy. But I loved the look and build quality of the 2big Quadra. Other drives on the market typically have cheap plastic bodies, most offer USB 2.0 but no Firewire, and some have their own special quirks (the tendency of the WD My Book models to unmount themselves spontaneously on the Mac, for example).

The LaCie d2 shares the same industrial design (also by Neil Poulton) as the 2big, but in a smaller size. I probably would not have considered this drive until I saw this word in the product description: fanless. Ode to joy! The d2 still sports the Great Blue Glowing Orb, albeit a more petite version than that of the 2big Quadra. I assume the room illumination should be reduced, and with no fan to drive me crazy, this might be the drive for me. User reviews on retailer sites praise the lack of fan noise, though some have gripes about the drive noise. We’ll see if this one will actually sleep when it should. I wish there were quality bare enclosures available on the market that would let me select my own hard drive. The Western Digital Caviar Green drives (lower power consumption, reduced noise) look intriguing. LaCie should consider selling bare enclosures for those who would like such an option – think of all the hassles they could avoid with returned units from failed hard drives!

Stay tuned for a review of the LaCie d2 Quadra…

I’m excited to be writing what is my first hardware review here on eQuixotic. My thanks to Mike Descher of the MXL Technology Division of Marshall Electronics for providing test units of three USB microphones for my review: the Studio 1 USB, the USB.008, and the USB.009. The USB.009 is the mic I used to record the narration for my Evernote tour, which was honored with a silver in the 2009 Articulate Guru Awards. The Articulate staff had high praise for the “excellent” sound quality of my narration, hence they had high praise for the sound quality of the USB.009. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First, it’s important to note that these are USB microphones, allowing you to plug them directly into your computer for audio recording – no breakout box required. Audio pros may scoff at USB microphones, preferring their expensive XLR mics and breakout boxes or mixing boards – and probably rightly so. But I’m no audio pro. I just want to plug in and go. I don’t want my desk covered up with more junk than needed. Nor do I want to have to fiddle with dozens of knobs and switches. So a USB microphone fits my needs perfectly. Sometimes it’s nice to be a simple man with simple needs.

The biggest complaint I’ve read about USB microphones is that the sound level afforded by the amount of power that can be provided via a USB connection can be low. In which case, why don’t we see Firewire microphones instead of USB? But I digress.

For a couple of years I’ve been using the Blue Snowball microphone, which is also a plug-and-play USB mic.

At the time I bought the Snowball, there were only two desktop USB mics on the market. Now there are many to choose from. And while my Snowball has served me well (and looks super cool), I suspect it may have a hard time holding its own against its younger competitors. We shall soon find out.

MXL is kind enough to include a case and a stand for each of these microphones, neither of which was included with my Snowball at the time of purchase (though Blue now includes a desktop stand with the Snowball, and they were gracious enough to send me one free of charge once they started bundling them with the mics). The cases are a nicety but not a necessity to me, as my mic remains in permanent residence on my desktop. Each mic also conveniently includes a 10′ USB cable, so you won’t have to boost a cable from, say, your printer every time you want to record some audio. (Now if only printer manufacturers would get a clue and include a USB cable with their printers…)

As you can probably imagine, these three models are at different levels of the microphone food chain, and their prices reflect that reality. Let’s jump into the nitty gritty of each, shall we?

Disclaimer: as I mentioned above, I’m no audio pro. I don’t pretend to be an audio pro. I have no idea what audio pros know. So I’m not going to get into things like frequency response, sampling rates, A/D converters, and whatnot. If you’re serious about such things (and I’m not saying you shouldn’t be), check the MXL website for the detailed specs. Me, I’m just looking for “Plug in, sound good.” *grunt*

Also, I’m not going to opine on the sound quality of each mic. Sound is, after all, one of those highly subjective things. And I’d just sound like a fool if I tried to pontificate about honey-smooth midranges and tinkling highs. I’ll let you be your own judge via some audio samples I’ll provide at the end of the review. Logic would dictate that the more expensive mic would sound better than the model below it, and that logic would probably be correct. Whether that amount of “better” justifies the upcharge between models…well, that will have to be up to you.

At the entry level, we have the Studio 1 USB.

Street price on this mic is only around $100, so you have no excuse to keep using that cheapo USB headset mic for your eLearning narration. The Studio 1 USB has a headphone jack for monitoring, but nothing else. No on-mic gain control, no sound settings. Plug it in, fire up your audio recording app of choice (mine is Apple’s GarageBand), and start recording. The headphone jack is a nice feature, as it provides low latency monitoring, i.e. you don’t get the annoying sound delay you may get when outputting your monitor audio from your computer. My gripe with the Studio 1 USB mic is the worthless stand that it’s bundled with. It’s tipsy and too small to accommodate a gooseneck pop filter (at least the pop filter I use, anyway). For my sample recordings I had to hold my pop filter by hand. Not good. And I may be an audio neophyte, but I do know one thing: a pop filter is a must. Notable plosives simply scream amateur hour. So tack on the price of a decent desktop mic stand to the Studio 1 USB.

And to any of these mics, tack on the price of a pop filter. Mine is a metal model I picked up at my local Guitar Center for around $50. This is money well spent. Trust me.

Moving along to our next mic, the USB.008 mic goes midtown, with a street price of around $170.

Sadly, the USB.008 comes with the same pointless mic stand as the Studio 1 USB, so again, factor in the price of a better stand. The USB.008 does provide you with a 3-way gain control switch to tweak your input levels, but oddly does away with the headphone jack for on-mic monitoring. A curious choice by MXL – you hate to see an upscale model lacking a feature found on its budget-priced little brother. And the USB.008 also has a cheesier case then the Studio 1 USB – it’s just a zippered soft case, unlike the plastic, compartmentalized case of the Studio 1 USB:

Curiouser and curiouser.

The Studio 1 USB and USB.008 are small compared to my Blue Snowball, with its tall stand and Ringer shockmount.

The USB.009 takes us uptown (way uptown compared to the prices of the other mics), with a street price around $400.

But this is MXL’s flagship USB mic, and it shows (sounds). First, this thing is built like a tank. I have no doubt it would survive an errant topple from the desktop with aplomb (I will not, however, confirm this via testing). The headphone monitoring jack is back (this time with its own volume control knob), with the addition of mix and gain control knobs. The mix knob controls the live mic and computer playback volume during monitoring. A nice touch. The USB.009 also comes with a nice aluminum case:

And, ta-da – a usable desktop mic stand! This is a heavy, solid piece of work that won’t be teetering over every time you bump your desk leg with your foot – and it ably accommodates a gooseneck pop filter.

MXL claims the USB.009 is the first plug-and-play USB mic to record at 24-bit/96kHz, though I don’t know if that spec is of the utmost importance for doing eLearning narration work. Nonetheless, the components in the USB.009 are a big step up from the other two mics in this review. And like my dad always said, in the long run you never regret spending extra money for quality (and I’ve learned the hard way that he was right).

I assume the USB.009 is also a better fit for instrument recording, so if you’re going to work on that acoustic new age guitar album after you finish your eLearning course, you’re good to go. And can you really put a price on versatility?

Size-wise, the USB.009 goes toe-to-toe with my Blue Snowball:

I have only two gripes about the USB.009. The first is the glowing blue light (!) that emanates from its core.

I don’t know about you, but glowing blue lights are one of those things that are kinda cool the first time you see them but very much uncool thereafter. It got annoying during a narration recording session. I wish the mic had a switch to turn off the light. I doubt Bob Dylan sings into a glowing blue mic…

My second gripe is the lack of indicator markings on the gain, mix and headphone volume knobs. It’s frustrating to have to turn a knob to its stop point to know where you are within the range.

So if I were MXL king for a day, I’d drop the blue light and add a marking to each knob. Easy fixes.

Also, my unfortunate test unit was afflicted with a short in the headphone volume knob, which would cause the sound to vacillate between stereo and left-channel-only, depending on the position of the knob. This became an annoyance during headphone monitoring. Were this a mic I had purchased, I assume MXL would replace the mic or repair the defect promptly.

But now I’m just picking nits. My clear favorite of the trio, blue light and all, is the USB.009. Big surprise. But is it worth the extra money? My dad says “absolutely.” And I’d have to agree. You’ll certainly get many years of high-quality narration recording out of this mic. But if your budget absolutely, positively can’t accommodate a $400 microphone, the USB.008 and Studio 1 USB should serve you ably. Once you buy a decent mic stand.

I’ll conclude this review with recording samples from each mic. These samples were recorded using Apple’s GarageBand, with the Narrator setting applied, as that’s the sound setting I use and I want these samples to reflect real world use. These are uncompressed WAV files.

I’ll also include a reference recording from my Blue Snowball mic, as well as a recording from a Plantronics USB headset mic, which many eLearning developers inexplicably find adequate. Zing!

The first sample includes a recording from each mic. But I’m not going to tell you which is which mic is which when you listen to them. Pick your favorite, then scroll to the end of the review to see which mic it is.  I used a snippet of narration from my Evernote tour for my source material.  NOTE: the links as shown below are not my ideal format – if anyone knows how to add a “Play” button for a WAV file in a WordPress post, please let me know.  I found plugins for audio players, but they don’t handle WAV – and I don’t want to give you compressed MP3 versions of the mic samples.

Samples from all mics together.

Below are individual sample recordings from each mic.

Plantronics .Audio DSP-400

Blue Snowball

MXL Studio 1 USB

MXL USB.008

MXL USB.009

And this is the order of the microphones as they appeared in the all-mics sample:

Blue Snowball

MXL USB.008

MXL Studio 1 USB

MXL USB.009

Plantronics .Audio DSP-400

Addendum: in response to DesignerDad’s comment (below), here’s a photo of my “homebrewed” sound booth. Ugly but cheap – and functional. I thought others might be interested in my setup as well. You can read about it in more detail in my October post on narration recording.