Samson CO1U USB Condenser Microphone
October 1, 2008 – 12:47 pm
This is an exceptionally good product. When i ordered it i wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, as i’d never heard of Samson before (despite a lot of broadcast radio technical experience). And i wasn’t sure how good a USB mic would be.
However, this mic certainly exceeds my expectations. The sound quality is very good and it worked immediately on my Linux system. It’s very well made and nice and heavy and solid feeling. It feels like a professional piece of equipment. I was very impressed. The included desk stand is a useless piece of junk though!
I had a bit of difficulty working out how to orient the mic to eliminate “P-pops”, as the usual technique of speaking over the top of it didn’t work. But i eventually worked out that holding it by the side of my mouth and speaking past it in that way works fine and i don’t have any problems with popping ‘p’s.
One rather strange thing about this mic is that it’s been built with a stereo preamp internally, but the signal is first fed to the right channel and then the right channel output is fed into the left channel input – this gives more amplification. I use it for spoken word and the signal from the right channel is rather low, but the signal from the left channel is fine. I’d imagine that for high sound levels – e.g., mic’ing up a drum kit, the right channel output would be best.
This probably won’t be of interest to windows users, as i believe the software provided with the mic makes it transparent. But for Linux users it’s important to understand it, as Samson doesn’t provide Linux software.
For Linux users, this means that for best results the levels for the two channels should be adjusted independently – and treated as a two-stage preamp. It also means only one channel can be used (the left and right channels are 180° out of phase because the left channel has been amplified twice) – don’t forget it’s a mono mic.
For recording, that means one of the channels must be eliminated. How you do this will vary depending on what editor you use – for example, Mhwaveedit allows you to map the left channel to both left and right, which gives you a sort of stereo-mono sound. With Audacity, you can split the stereo tracks and then delete the right channel (or left channel, for high level signals, i guess).
This isn’t a particularly cheap mic – nor a particularly expensive one – but it’s a better mic than i would have expected for the price.
Dear Will,
I wonder if I may ask you a question. I have a CO1U mike – very happy with it – which I use for karioke singing on SingSnap. I know almost nothing about recording stuff, but I gather that other folks on SingSnap are able to add “Echo” effect to their recordings by using a mixer box. I have looked at mixer boxes, and it seems to me that they are designed to take the old jack plug type of microphones, and do not support a USB microphone. Is there some way I can get effects during the recording process using my Samsun microphone?
Hi,
The only way you could send the sound from a USB mic through the sort of effects box you’re talking about is to connect the audio output of your computer into the effects box. But then you may have trouble recording the output signal from the effects box. Normal musician-type effects boxes don’t have USB inputs.
The way to do it is to use effects software on the computer you are recording on. I don’t know what system you use, but sound editing software often has those types of effects included.
Audacity is a free sound editor that i can thoroughly recommend.
Hi,
I just recently got this mic and when I am trying to record it is like a few beats behind my music. Is this something I am doing wrong. Thanks so much.Dena
Well, you haven’t given any information about how you’re doing it, so it’s impossible to say really. However, it sounds like the software you’re using may not be capable of real time simultaneous playback and recording – either that or you haven’t got it configured correctly.
You may find that Audacity will work.
samson c01u usb studio condenser.
i had effects that came with sonar le but now they are gone – help dsek sucks!
please help me 🙁
im also used samson co1u but i cant sing live with any effect from there?
is there any software to download for usb mic effect like echo,chorus etc
help plz 🙁
thanks alot