The first thing I warn people who are getting into podcasting is that it's a slippery slope. You start out with a simple mic and produce your show in GarageBand and the next thing you know you've got a bunch of microphones, a couple of digital recorders, and a home studio that has expanded beyond your needs.

As your equipment gets better your standards are probably getting better as well, and so you'll constantly be checking out the gear other people are using. In many ways it's like photography without the lens lock-in.

So when fellow gear-head David Battino asked me if I'd be interested in reviewing two pieces of portable recording gear, the Blue Snowflake USB mic and SM Pro Audio Mic Thing baffle, I jumped at the chance. I like the look of the Snowflake and I'd wanted to know for a while if something like the Mic Thing was worth having.

My bias is clear: I only review products I think I'm going to like and I review them on how they handle the human voice. It takes so much time to evaluate a product fairly that I don't want to mess around with gear I don't think I'm going to end up liking. For those of you with a short attention span, I personally don't find the Snowflake worth owning but will explain why you might. I do like the Mic Thing but would not take it on the road with me.

The Snowflake is Blue's compact, affordable followup to the popular Snowball USB mic, a podcaster favorite. (Click to enlarge.)

Playing with the Snowflake

Flip the Snowflake's laptop screen clip around and it becomes a desktop stand.

I really wanted to like the Snowflake. Look at it: it's cute. It's compact. It's easy to set up on your desk or on the back of your laptop. It looks really well designed to go with you and perch wherever you need it to be. And it's just $89.99 list.

The problem with the Snowflake is that its physical design means that you'll probably work it from too far away. When you use a microphone you should experiment with getting closer and farther away from it and comparing the way you sound. For the most part, you'll find that you have a much richer and fuller sound when you are pretty close. You certainly want to be closer than the foot or so away that you will tend to be from the Snowflake.

On the plus side, the built-in USB output is very convenient, because you don't need an external preamp. You just connect the Snowflake to your computer's USB jack and start to record. (Direct USB connection also lets you bypass the computer's analog mic input, which is often noisy.)

However, if you have good audio habits — monitoring what you record with good headphones as you lay it down — USB mics can be a problem. That's because there's a bit of a delay, or latency, as the computer processes the signal and spits it back out to the computer's headphone jack. This latency is only a fraction of a second, but it can be distracting.

Pricier USB mics (and most external computer audio interfaces) have a zero-latency design that passes a copy of the analog signal directly to the device's built-in headphone jack, but the Snowflake doesn't, so you will hear a bit of a delay. I sometimes record with one headphone cup on and one off but it requires practice and concentration to make that work.

A slide-on tray stores the USB cord for travel.

The Sound of the Snowflake

If convenience and physical design are driving your decision, the Snowflake might be the right choice for you. It's also very reasonably priced and travels well. But if sound quality is more important, then your opinion may change. I didn't care for the Snowflake on my voice.

To be fair, I don't tend to record directly into my Mac. My portable unit is either an M-Audio MicroTrack or a TASCAM HD-P2 along with a Rode NTG-2 shotgun mic. The MicroTrack is dwarfed by the mic and some people complain about the recorder's preamps, but I think the most important tool in the chain is your microphone, and for me the Snowflake doesn't stand up to some of the other ones I own. Granted, the Rode is much more expensive ($349 list), but I even preferred the little T-mic that comes with the MicroTrack. In particular, the Snowflake's low end was thin. (Or my voice is higher than I remember.)

• Snowflake at 6 Inches (536KB WAV)

I was hoping the Snowflake would be an easy choice for "good enough" audio on the road, and for some applications, it is. If I'm using Skype or iChat to talk to friends or family, then the Snowflake is a lot quieter than the built in mic on my MacBook.

• MacBook Mic (324KB WAV)
• Snowflake on MacBook (753KB WAV)

If I'm recording a personal podcast, then the Snowflake is fine as long as I include time in my workflow to clean up the audio. I probably wouldn't choose the Snowflake for a professional podcast, although many screencasters are using it to record the voiceover for their videos.

Folded up, the Snowflake becomes compact enough to stash in a pocket.

You can find a bunch of Snowflake reviews on YouTube. In this one, the reviewer points to many of the shortcomings but concludes that when you speak close to the mic the sound is very good. I thought the sound he used as his example of good audio was thin and distorted. But I also thought the Snowflake sounded pretty good when he used it to record acoustic guitar — at least to my non-musical ears.

But here's the thing. You know those cameras that fit in your pocket? They don't take pictures as lovely as the SLRs with really good glass. But they are in your pocket and so you use them. The Snowflake would seem to be in that category, because it's so easy to bring with you.

Except, here's the other thing. You need your laptop to use it. I seldom have my laptop with me when I'm out and about and notice some sound I just want to capture. For that I want a small audio recorder with a small but decent microphone. In most business situations I do have my laptop with me, so packing the Snowflake is not a big deal.

Except, here's one final thing: the handling noise for the Snowflake is not good. You'll want to put the Snowflake down and leave it there. So it's hard to get a good recording of a conversation because you want people to be close to the mic but you don't want to move the mic around.

Once you have your mic sorted out, another dramatic way to improve your sound is through acoustic treatment, which is where the next product comes in.