Blue Snowflake Compact USB Microphone

Interesting but flawed design

It is a good design, but I find myself not liking it as much as others seem. It looks cute, for sure, but is also quite obviously flawed.

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It is a good design, but I find myself not liking it as much as others seem. It looks cute, for sure, but is also quite obviously flawed.


Pros:

(1) Convenience and mobility. No need to wear a headset or handhold a mic.
(2) Sound quality much better than built-in microphones.
(3) Built-in soundcard (A/D converter) with quite good quality. No need to worry about the humming noises of laptop internal sound cards, and no need to mess with external sound cards.
(4) USB compatibility. Truly plug-and-play.
(5) Pretty good build quality, better than most consumer products.
(6) Good-looking.


Cons:

(1) Picks up too much ambient sound. Even a slight wind generates unacceptably high level of background noise. Completely unusable outdoors. Consider to use it only in a quiet room. This microphone is supposed to be unidirectional, but its ability to reject ambient sound is not even remotely close to that of handhold microphones I've used, not to even mention microphones that have noise cancellation mechanisms.

I believe this microphone was designed with conflicting goals which forced compromises. When it comes to microphones, there are two very different types of uses. The first type is the recording of a single source from a single direction (such as an individual speaker's voice), the second type is the recording of multiple sources from multiple directions (such as a conference room). These two types need very different types of microphones, namely unidirectional for the former and omnidirectional for the latter. I feel the maker of the Snowflake would like to have both type of buyers with a single design. Not a good idea. I think they should give an option of two different types to the Snowflake, either using a modular system or using a switch. In addition, because the Snowflake is intended for mobile use, they should also consider adding noise cancellation feature to deal with ambient noises. With the present design, this limitation alone makes the Snowflake nearly useless to me because I intended to use it on my laptop mostly in the backyard.

(2) In addition to the unacceptable ambient noise level, inherent noise (self-noise) level is also higher than a good handheld microphone or good headset. (The inherent noise is the noise generated from the microphone and the circuit even when there is no ambient noise.) When used at the supposed placement in relation to the user, this microphone is clearly not as clean as the high-quality microphones I've used. This may not be a problem for noncritical recordings, but it is something to be remembered if you are recording demands high-quality. Personally, I want to use it for voice recognition, which I believe is a much more challenging environment than casual recording. Based on my short experience, I am somewhat satisfied, but not without reservation because of the noise. I just hope the noise does not significantly impact the recognition accuracy. So far, it does not appear to be a serious problem, but the higher noise level is obvious and I am concerned. Of course, this is talking about dictating in a quiet room. If there is any appreciable amount of ambient noise, the Snowflake is completely unusable as I discussed above.

(3) Aside the noise issues, the sound quality is not as good as professional microphones used with a good sound card. The recorded sound is simply not as round, tight and solid. The sound quality is in the middle between microphones built in laptop computers and a decent headset, a handheld or studio microphone. I say this based on testing with actual recordings, not speculation. While the Snowflake is noticeably better than a built-in microphone, it is noticeably inferior to a good handheld microphone or a quality headset (such as those used in wireless microphone sets).

(4) There is an annoying bug when used with voice recognition program NaturallySpeaking. Whenever you put the computer in sleep and later wake it up, the USB Snowflake will not come out of the sleep. You will have to unplug the microphone and replug it to make it work. This happens only when voice recognition program is running. I'm not sure what causes the problem (the microphone, the voicerecognition program, or the computer operating system?), but this shouldn't happen. I use Vista. Other external USB devices all work fine in this respect. Regardless what the cause is, this is quite annoying because I put my laptop in sleep frequently. Because the problem may not be caused by the microphone, I don't mean to downgrade the microphone by this problem. But those who consider to use this microphone for voice recognition should take notice of this issue.

(5) The joint of the microphone head is very loose, hardly able to hold a position firm. This makes you nervous all the time, and in fact do cause frequent adjustments. This is clearly an overlook and must be improved in the next iteration of this product (if there will be one). Nothing affects the user experience like unreliability.

(6) There is no tightening nor adjustment mechanism for this thing to be clamped over the edge of the computer lid. It just loosely and barely hangs there. Not very stable, and easily falls off with any laptop movement. I eventually decided to place the microphone aside the computer. This works well (but does require a support surface), because thankfully the metal case can be flipped over to become a standing frame. Very convenient.

(7) I wish they made the microphone head (the ball part) completely detachable from the box so that one can comfortably hold it in hand if needs to (for example, if you really need a low noise level for recording). With the current design, if you want to handhold this microphone, you can only hold it with the entire metal frame, which is not only heavy but too edgy and uncomfortable to hold for very long.

(8) I feel the whole thing is a bit too heavy for its intended type of use. Is it possible to make it lighter without sacrificing the integrity? I don't know. I kind of like the feel of its metal make, but still think lighter would be better.

To be fair, however, the lower sound quality and worse noise characteristics compared to handheld or headset microphones isn't totally surprising, because such characteristics are inherent to the detached type of use in which the microphone is placed at a distance from speaker. The sound quality depends greatly on the distance between the user and the microphone. I tested the Snowflake handholding it close to my mouth (about 3-4 inches away), and found the quality of the recording was quite close to that of a good handheld microphone. But of course this is not how the microphone is designed to be used. Placed over the top edge of my laptop lid (the intended way to use it), the Snowflake sounded decidedly worse. The noise floor is much higher, because at that distance, the recording level has to be raised to the maximum in order to have a decent pickup. Still much better than a built-in microphone, but if you are hoping for very high-quality recording comparable to a handheld or studio microphone, you shouldn't buy this microphone. Especially, if you intend to use it outdoor, I strongly recommend not to buy this microphone. On the other hand, if you would like to have the convenience of not having to handhold a microphone or wear a microphone over your head, I'm not aware of a better USB-based computer microphone out there at this time.

Overall, interesting and promising design that may satisfy lots of users who are not very discriminative in terms of the sound quality, but for those who don't want to compromise too much, don't hope too much. It's very good for indoor use, but are unsuitable for outdoor use, and also not to replace a high quality microphone for high-quality recordings (even in a quiet room). And yes, the sleeping bug and several other flaws do bother me.