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I recently bought a bm-800 condenser mic and is now configuring it to my laptop, however, I thought it was plug and play, (without a phantom power), when I tried recording and listened to it, I feel like I'm still using my laptop's built in mic because the sound is not really clear and the noise is just everywhere. Can anyone help me, configure this mic properly in windows 10?

this is the mic I bought... http://techaeris.com/2015/08/22/bm-800-pro-studio-condenser-microphone-sponsored-post/

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  • The page you linked says it needs phantom & won't run from a laptop.
    – Tetsujin
    Oct 8, 2016 at 6:35
  • A bit of basic research was needed here; virtually all condenser mics need phantom power.
    – user9881
    Oct 10, 2016 at 17:03
  • I'm downvoting this because the answer is on the link you posted (under Important Notes).
    – n00dles
    Oct 11, 2016 at 16:12

2 Answers 2

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Condenser microphones require power to operate. I'm not sure what they are doing to have it work at all via just plugging in to a sound card, but you'll need phantom power and may still have issues as there are a fair number of reviews that complain about the quality of the mic in general from looking around. Not sure how many of the good reviews are legit vs fake as many of the good reviews seem to be a bit unbelievable for a $15-$30 condenser mic (most decent condensers are in the $200+ range and would include a built in power supply if designed for use with a PC.)

There are some exceptions to that rule, but generally speaking, you get what you pay for. If price is really a limiting factor, you might try something like Behringer's C-1 (runs about $50 us, so a little less than twice the one you got). It's USB based and gets the power it needs from there. Behringer is a decentish brand, but is kind of hit or miss in terms of the quality of the sound. Not sure which side the C-1 falls on.

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  • My BM-800 has an EXL / 3.5mm jack cable. It also contains a circuit which may well be a preamplifier designed to run from the 5V supplied by the PC. however, in the supplied cable, pins 1 and 3 are connected together in the XLR plug. Also, tip and ring are connected together at the jack plug. I don't understand how this unit is supposed to get power with this cable.
    – KDM
    Mar 11 at 14:40
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If you feel like you are still using your laptop's built-in microphone but the reaction to positioning your mouth at a certain distance to the BM-800 makes obvious that you are recording through the microphone, you are likely already getting close to the best the microphone will be able to produce. Some laptop soundchips have the ability to provide several different "plugin power" levels: in that case you want to set the highest voltage available.

Buying a separate phantom power supply is a waste of money. Instead, get a soundcard with balanced microphone inputs providing phantom power (+48V). The sound quality on those will be better than with your laptop sound input (which just is crappy on its own). You'll also need a proper XLR cable (XLR on both sides) to connect microphone and soundcard.

However, apart from its stylish looks the BM-800 is not all that much better than your built-in laptop microphone (pro hint: any equipment explicitly advertised as "professional" and "studio" isn't what a professional or studio would usually buy), so after getting a good soundcard (which really is indispensible for getting reasonable quality), you'll likely be looking at actually getting a better microphone. Reasonable ones can be had for about $40, reasonably good ones for $200, and there really is not much of a limit to what you can pay.

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