Snowball Microphone - Brushed Aluminum

You really don't have to look much further than the reviews here on the Amazon product page to see the Blue Snowball was an absolute hit for the company. Having used the product myself, I can see why; it's a wonderfully built product offering professional sound at an affordable price (around $60-$70 when I purchased). Despite these qualities, I found sound profile of the Blue Snowball to be noisier than I expected, and it's response to be a little flat. As author of AutoCAD 2011 and AutoCAD LT 2011: No Experience Required, I purchased the Blue Snowball to help me create professionally sounding how-to videos. Before trying the Snowball, I was previously using the Logitech ClearChat Pro USB Headset mic. While it's certainly among the best headset mics I have used, it didn't have the full sound I was looking for. Based on the positive reviews here and elsewhere on the internet, I chose to give the Blue Snowball a try. For me the Blue Snowball easily outperformed the Logitech headset I had previously used, but the sound still wasn't to the standard I would expect of a professional grade microphone. As expressed by several other reviewers, I found the mic to have a very low recording level. During post-production I found myself having to increase the sound level on every recording I did with this mic. Likewise, even before normalizing the volume, I found the mic to be rather noisy. Moments of silence were filled with the hiss typical of lower-end mics. I'm not a sound engineer, but I suspect this could be due to the fact this mic relies on the computer for gain settings. Likewise, while I'm sure the frequency response of this mic is perfectly suited for many people, I found the sound profile to be rather flat for me (narrating how-to videos). I have since returned the Blue Snowball, exchanging it for the Blue Microphones Yeti USB Microphone. Having experience with both mics, I can say there's a night-and-day difference between these two mics. The Yeti's frequency response is both cleaner and fuller than what I experienced with the Snowball. The independent Gain control of the Yeti is something that I feel allows me to capture cleaner recordings, and the rest of its features are just icing on the cake. Bottom line, I find the Blue Snowball to be a great first-step for anyone looking to add professional audio to their recordings; however it does come with several shortcomings. At the time of this review the Blue Yeti sells on Amazon for about $100 and the Snowball about $65. If you can spare the extra cash, I highly recommend stepping up to the Yeti. If you're looking for decent professional quality audio on a budget; the Snowball is, in my opinion, the best entry-level mic on the market today.