Hacker's ramblings

It's not that you'd be talking all the time, but quite often a good microphone is needed. It may be (video)conferencing to somebody or just to get your multiplayer game coordinated with the other people you're playing with. Lot of people are happy using the tiny mic in their headphones, but not me. I'd rather invest some real money to a proper piece of hardware to get my sound transmitted over crystal clear.

Since I didn't want to go for ridiculously expensive studio ones, I stayed below 300 € price range and went for a Røde NT-USB (details are at https://www.rode.com/microphones/nt-usb). The microphone would work as a self-standing desk mic, but adding a few options allows me to amp up the experience to a near-studio -quality.

This is what my rig looks like:

As you can see, there is a PSA1 boom arm and a SMR shock mount to keep the sound quality better when I bang the desk in rage.

Mic itself looks like this:

The metal ring used to fasten the microphone to a stand gives you indication of the quality of this product. No messing around here. No flimsy plastic screws. Steel!

Also the acronym USB gives you a hint about how you might connect this lump of metal to a computer, using USB 2.0 interface on the bottom of the microphone. If this would be professional-quality, instead of USB-B connector, you would use for example XLR-connector for cabling. This would leave you to do the analog-to-digital -conversion by yourself. I chose this particular unit for the reason it hooks up to your PC/Mac/Linux/whatever directly. Here no extra stuff needed, but the setup is limited by USB's 5 meter max. cable length. There is plenty of USB-cable in the box, so don't worry about running out.

Shock mount is for reducing any possible noise caused by accidental headbump into desk or microphone. As suggested, the mount absorbs most of the shock and not transmitting really weird noises over. This is how the "cradle" looks like:

There is a windshield reducing any air blowing from me towards the microphone. Again, reducing any weird noises sounding like I was hit by a hurricane to being transmitted over. The shock mount connects to the boom arm using a 5/8" (or 3/8") screw:

As you can see, there is an adapter there allowing you to use pretty much any mic boom of your choice. I chose to go full on with Røde.

Important thing is to note, that manufacturer does NOT recommend using SMR shock-mount with NT-USB microphone. Product details at https://www.rode.com/accessories/smr do NOT list NT-USB as being compatible or related product. The reason is not as dramatical as you might think. The products are compatible, but:

In a scenario, where you would use the USB to transmit sound back to your headphones via 3.5mm jack in the mic, it would be difficult for you to change the headphones volume as the volume knobs aren't that easy to access. You can access them, but not as well as manufacturer would love you to. So, they simply flag the products as "incompatible".

Ultimately, I've been really happy with the product. My sound is heard extremely well on the other side. Helping with this is the boom arm, which lets me place the microphone to almost any location of my choosing while doing my computing, whatever type of computing that might be. The best thing is the very high quality of the product. I don't think I'll be buying a new mic anytime soon.