Am I Blue?
by Gary Woods

The Blue Microphone Company http://www.bluemic.com/ makes some great studio quality microphones costing a lot of money. I see them in professional recording studios and on television all the time and my personal experience with them is that they sound great. The company was founded by some Latvian émigrés and they've developed quite a fine reputation.

But today we're going to talk about products put out by Blue that are a whole lot less expensive and designed to penetrate the home recording market. Among the products they make for the home market are the Snowball ($99.99) the Snowflake ($59.99) the Icicle ($59.99) and the Eyeball ($79.99). All these microphones work with both Mac and PC and are designed for recording your guitar or voice around your kitchen table or back bedroom.

The new kid on the block in the Blue stable is a microphone called Mikey ($79.99) which works with the iPod touch, iPod 5G, iPod nano as well as the iPod classic. It's a superior quality stereo condenser microphone with a 3 position user selectable gain settings and it can record everything from a whisper to a rock concert in stunning high fidelity.

There's a newer version of Mikey coming out this spring that features a line-input, USB pass through and a 230 degree rotating design. When you're ready to step up to really great sounding recordings on your iPod or iPhone it's time to check out the folks at Blue Microphone.

If you have any suggestions or questions for me please drop me a note at gandlwoods@earthlink.net or see my column on the Internet at http://www.santabarbaraproperties.com or call me at (805) 729-0910