In all seriousness, here's what I'd suggest.
First off I sell and design mics at JJ Audio with Jim Jacobsen so please forgive the spam.
Buy the cheapest used MXL mic you can find. Go to the flea market, they sell the 990 like crazy for 20 bucks or try craigslist or ebay. Or look for the 57m or the 909. The 57m goes for 59 bucks brand new right now I believe.
We can typically do a Fet mod on that mic for a very very low price and it will sound good!
Buy a used DMP3 or a brand new one. Used they go for maybe 75 to 85 bucks in good working condition. I bought mine from LA on craiglist for 85 bucks. Stupid good preamp!
Buy a 5 dollar cable from Radioshack, 1/4" mono to 1/8" mono, use your computer's soundcard.
Alot of them are actually decent soundcards and while they aren't Prism converters, you can get some good results out of the newer onboard soundcards, from say 2004 and onward.
Save up for a good soundcard in the meantime, master your setup and then buy something really nice.
With only a 300 dollar budget you've kind of handcuffed yourself as far as which way your dollars are going to swing. Do you get a decent mic and a crappy preamp? And a crappy soundcard?
Or do you pick 2 good ones out of the 3 and save for a good third piece to the puzzle.
Regardless of what people save about the DMP3, I got proof its a good sounding preamp. I own one and I even got the head tech over at JJ Audio to get one. He likes it so much that thats the typical chain for his mic demos now. Its really a great purchase for a small fee.
As far as the mic, you could always just get a mic and work with what you have. If you bought something like the MXL 990 for $50 brand new, plus a new DMP3, you'd be at 209 bucks plus shipping, which would leave you under 100 for a sound card.
Not too many options are around, but you could get your hands on an EMU 0404 for that kind of money. Its a good soundcard in my opinion. I have one installed at my partner's demo studio, the Clambake. Its a clean soundcard, not the greatest interface, but its how we tracked our first album. We still use it for guitar tracking every now and then. We've since graduated to RME 9652 and 3 X ADA8000 clocked to the RME. Soundquality to my ears is about 10% better but also you get 24 channels versus 4.
All the vocals and guitars on my myspace link were cut with the EMU 0404. We were using a Rane MS1B preamp (very similar to the DMP3 sound wise), dbx 163x to record.
Food for thought!
Peace
Illumination |