Musical Instruments Reviews

• Plug and play design no software required!
• Professional studio quality performance record both vocals and instruments
• Mac and PC compatible
• Blues renowned circuit and distinctive two capsule design
• Switchable mic patterns for a range of recording applications

Finally, a USB mic that is not only easy to use, but sounds as good on your desktop as it does in a professional recording studio. Meet the Snowball, the world’s 1st professional USB mic.Whether you are recording a guitar at your kitchen table or a complete band in the studio, the Snowball can catch it with detail unheard of before in a USB mic.The Snowball is a direct plug and play mic that connects to either a Mac or PC no extra software is obliged. With its dual capsule design and distinctive three pattern switch, the Snowball can handle everything from soft vocals to the loudest garage band and it is ideal for podcasting. Check it out and you will see why it is the coolest mic in town.

From the Manufacturer:
Finally, a USB mic that’s not only easy to use, but sounds as good on your desktop as it does in a professional recording studio. Meet the Snowball,™ theworld’s 1st professional USB mic.

If you’re recording a guitar at your kitchen table or a complete band in the studio, the Snowball can catch it with detail unheard of before in a USB mic.

The Snowball is a direct plug n’ play mic that connects to either a Mac or PC – no extra software is obliged. With its dual capsule design and distinctive three pattern switch cardioid, cardioid with 10dB pad and omni, the Snowball can handle everything from soft vocals to the loudest garage band — and it’s ideal for podcasting. Check it out and you’ll see why it’s the coolest mic in town.

The world’s 1st professional studio quality USB mic, from Blue.

Features &amp, Functionality

1. What exactly is this Snowball all about?
   The Snowball is a revolutionary microphone. Leave it to Blue to reinvent the wheel… err, microphone once again! With USB connectivity, it never been easier to get live audio into your Macintosh or Windows desktop or laptop. Just plug it in, change your input level and you’re up and running.
2. Is The Snowball a dynamic microphone like the Blue Ball, or a condenser like the Blue 8Ball or Kiwi?
   The Snowball is a condenser, which, as indicated by the audio wonks we know, has a smooth open sound with a nice, natural high end.
3. I’ve heard that condenser microphones require something called phantom power. Do I have to concern myself with this? Does The Snowball need batteries?
   No. The Snowball derives its operating voltage from something called bus voltage, which is generally present on your USB port. As long as the red LED is glowing, you know you’ve got power. The Snowball doesn’t require batteries.
4. Do I need any special software to use The Snowball? Do I need any drivers?
   Theoretically, no. Based on your application, your OS may have enough features to use the potential of The Snowball. But, to get the most out of your Snowball, you’ll want to have many kind of software that lets for digital signal processing and non linear editing that will accept audio from the USB port. Many examples of these programs are listed below. As long as you’re using Windows XP or Apple OSX, you won’t need any drivers.
5. Can I use The Snowball with a conventional analog audio mixer?
   No. The Snowball features digital output only. It must be connected to a USB port to function.
6. What sample rate and word length does The Snowball use?
   The Snowball’s digital output is set to 44.1 kHz / 16 bit, just like an audio CD. But this is something that only audio geeks really have to worry about.
7. How can I choose a different sample rate?
   Because The Snowball is intended for the greatest easy operation and setup, sample rate / word length aren’t user definable. Sorry, geeks.
8. Can I use more than one snowball at a time?
   Many audio editing software lets for many USB connections. Verify with your software vendor – they should have technical assistants who can answer your questions about their product.
9. What does cardioid and omnidirectional mean? Why am I supposed to care?
   They are the two polar patterns The Snowball is able of producing. If you think of polar patterns as the form of the area that a microphone “hears,” omnidirectional hears everything at equal volume from all angles in a 360o sphere bordering the mic, while cardioid only hears what’s right in front of it at full volume and other sounds at increasingly diminished volume as the sound source moves more away from the center of the mic audio techs call this off axis. You may want to care because one of the most useful features of a microphone is the capability to control its pickup. We like polar patterns so much, that many of our professional studio microphones have as many as nine different patterns! With The Snowball, we’ve given you the two most probably to be useful to you.
10. What is The Snowball used for? Is it a vocal mic, an instrument mic or both?
    The Snowball was intended to offer a large range of applications where a high quality transducer a cool way to say microphone is obliged, but so is easy use and setup. Though most professional engineers favor certain microphones for certain applications, we intended The Snowball for use with a large range of resources. Here are many suggested applications we came up with when we were locked in Blue’s patented anechoic think tank: instrument and voice for music production / pre production / demos, DV looping / dialog, podcasting, sound effects, audio sampling, interactive programming, video sweetening / post, internet telephony, internet conferencing, recording lectures, poetry slams, spoken word performances and speeches by your beloved politician – usually anywhere where you need an easy to use microphone and you can access a computer with a USB port. Happy recording!
11. Do I have to keep The Snowball in the freezer when I’m not using it?
    No. This is one snowball that won’t melt!

Note: as there are so various software packages that are matched with The Snowball, we’re collecting a list of software we’ve tested and guaranteed compatibility. We’ll publish that list shortly with in depth information explaining how to use The Snowball with each package because, as you may be able to imagine, they’re all different! In the mean time, we propose consulting your software’s manual, user forums and technical help lines. Here are some to get you started:

Software Setups
How to get audio from my Snowball with…

• Garage Band
  1. Go to Preferences >Audio and choose the Blue mic as the input device it will only show up when The Snowball is plugged in.
  2. Create a vocal track and choose the Blue mic as the input device for that track.
  3. You may have to change the Snowball’s input level in the control panel if you experience any distortion crackling.
• Logic seven
  1. Open the Audio and MIDI setup program in your Apps >Utilities folder.
  2. Create an Aggregate Audio Source Audio menu open Aggregate device editor.
  3. Add the devices you want to use to the aggregate device Built in audio and Blue mic.
  4. Change the audio device in Logic’s audio preferences from Default to Aggregate.
• Sonar
  1. Select “USB Audio Device” 1, in, zero out from an audio track.
  2. From inside that subcategory, there are three selections: Left USB Audio Device, Right USB Audio Device, and Stereo USB Audio Device.
  3. Select Left or Right for mono audio tracks.
  4. Press “R” to arm the track for recording.
  5. Roll disk.
• Adobe Premier Elements four Windows Vista/XP
  1. First, make certain that your Snowball has the new firmware update. With this latest update installed, you will be good to go. If you may want to experience any problems getting the program to recognize the mic, Adobe recommends the following:

     If the device doesn’t let you to record, then your microphone isn’t being detected as a valid input device in Premiere Elements. You may be able to use an open source program called ASIO4ALL, which is a device driver that generally wraps present WDM devices, like USB microphones, as ASIO compatible sound devices. Use the following steps to use this tool:

  2. Quit Premiere Elements.
  3. Visit the following web page and download the new available variant of ASIO4ALL: asio4all.Com/
  4. Install the software, and restart the system if asked to do so by the installer.
  5. Make certain that your microphone is plugged in.
  6. Launch Premiere Elements.
  7. Go to the ‘Edit >Preferences..>Audio Hardware’ menu choice.
  8. For the Default Device, decide the ASIO4ALL choice.
  9. Click the ASIO Settings button, then choose your microphone from the list of devices, click Exit, , then click OK on the Preferences dialog. Close , then restart Premiere Elements.

Hardware Platforms

• Windows Setup Procedure
  1. Under START MENU open SOUNDS AND AUDIO DEVICES control panel.
  2. Select AUDIO tab, insure BLUE BALL USB MIC is selected as DEFAULT DEVICE.
  3. Click on VOLUME, choose proper volume level.
  4. Exit control panel.
• Macintosh Setup Procedure
  1. 1. Open Apple menu > SYSTEM PREFERENCES.
  2. Double click SOUND preference file.
  3. Click INPUT tab.
  4. Double click BLUE USB BALL MIC under decide A DEVICE FOR SOUND INPUT dialog box.
  5. Set input volume to the proper level.
  6. Exit SYSTEM PREFERENCES.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 30th, 2008 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Musical Instruments. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.