Generally outside the PC world there are three standards for audio
signals: Tiny mic level signals, line level signals such as used to
patch a CD player into an amplifier and then speaker level to drive
headphones or speakers. The Mac uses line level inputs while PCs use mic
level inputs so if you want to hook up a plain old mic to a mac you'll
need a pre amp. PCs also do a rather odd (or ingenious) thing not seen
in regular audio setups. There is a type of mic called a condenser mic
which requires power to operate. This power can come from batteries but
more often comes from "phantom power" which is a 48v signal sent out the
mic wires from the mixer. In the PC world they didn't have a 48v line
laying around but they did have 5v so they used that instead and made
special mics to run on 5v. 5v will not make it very far down a wire but
most PC mic cables are only a couple feet long. What this causes is a
second problem for Macs which don't support this PC-only 5v mic
'standard'. So even if you could hook the pins up to a preamp from your
PC mic, it still would fail to function because it needs 5v. Maybe
somebody could hack together a way to get phantom power from a standard
mixer into a PC mic but they would have to figure out how to drop the
normal 48v down to 5. Anyway, that's a long way of saying PC mics are
very different from any other audio stuff out there and it's probably
better/cheaper/easier to just not bother trying to get one to work on
anything other than a PC. I actually prefer the Mac way since I like to
have external gear which, other than mics, usually has line level
outputs so I can just patch it right into my mac audio input. My usual
setup for skype, demo recording and such is to just use a cheap Shure
SM58 with an old Mackie mixer. I can then run the audio out of my mac
into the mixer which I can mix with my own voice mic and anything else
and run that back into the Mac. That way I have independent control over
the Mac/voice mix.
CB
On 10/28/11 12:27 PM, Alex Hall wrote:
Hi all,
I just made a discovery that I really wish someone had shared with me
earlier. Apparently, Macs use a different microphone input than most
other PC sound cards. This means that the standard, non line-quality
microphone you may have, as I do, will not work with a Mac's
microphone jack. You either need a converter, a microphone that is
certified to work with Macs, or a USB microphone. This also explains
why Windows sees only a line-in jack for audio input in addition to
digital audio.
Have a great day,
Alex (msg sent from BrailleNote
mehg...@gmail.com; http://www.facebook.com/mehgcap
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