Microphone for vocal recording?

[iMark]

Sorry if this sounds really dumb, but i'm new to music creation and i'm looking into buying either a Sure SM57/SM58 or Sennheiser E815S-X mic for recording some vocals and then putting them through Reason 3.0's vocoder.

what puzzles me though is how i will go about connecting this type of mic to my computer? Will i need a usb device or will it simply connect to the combined optical digital input/audio line in (minijack)

if it helps my current setup is a 2.0ghz white macbook with upgrades and a Korg kontrol 49 plus my DAW software. and hopefully next month and upgraded spec 20" intel imac.

thanks m

 

[CanadaRAM]

Check the Digital Audio forum and.or do a Search - we have covered this many, many times.

Yes, you will need some manner of USB or Firewire Digital Audio Interface to go from most microphone signals into your Mac (and as well, to get higher quality stereosound out of the Mac, and perhaps also to provide a MIDI interface between your Mac and keyboard instruments and other noisemakers - except maybe your Korg Kontrol has that Kovered.)

While you can plug some micsinto the audio in, depending on the Mac in question the Mac doesn't have a microphone preamplifier, and will usually produce no or poor signal.

Go to the library or newsstand and load up on magazines -- Sound on Sound (who have a feature article this month "Vocal recording - the ultimate guide"), Recording, FutureMusic, Electronic Musicial, Computer Music, Keyboard -- they all have frequent how to articles and reviews.

 

[iMark]

thanks alot CanadaRAM, and apologies everyone i should've submitted this in the correct subforum.

 

[WinterMute]

No problem, I've moved it...

Check out the SE range of mics, they are cheap (ish) and sound remarkably good.

The SM57 is not (IMO) a particularly good vocal recording mic, its fine live or on a snare or guitar amp however.

 

[dogbone]

this may help.