Samson USB Meteor Mic review

As a podcast producer, I’m extremely wary whenever remote contributors tell me “oh it’s fine I have a mic”. Whilst almost everything has a mic built in these days the quality of said mic varies wildly from “acceptable” to “agonising”. Despite leaps in audio recording technology and post-processing effects, it’s still really hard to rescue poorly recorded audio (this is coming from someone who spend hours removing coughs, claps and the hum of nearby vending machines from various audio recordings).

So I literally cheer the introduction of each every affordable high-quality audio recording solution and fervently hope they get into the hands of as many people as possible. The newest kid on the block is the £99 Meteor Mic, a USB studio condenser microphone that mixes quality with innovative design.

Shaped like a mix between a 1950′s radio mic and a 1960′s alien spaceship, the Meteor is incredibly stylish and its chrome-plated all metal body gives it an incredibly solid feel. And it’s not just eye-candy either. The stand helps when positioning the Meteor for instrument recording (and it comes with a really helpful guide to recording vocals, guitars, drums and basic audio engineering skills).

A headphone jack and a dial on the front makes onboard monitoring really easy. There is even a mute function that you can access simply by hitting the volume knob. Unfortunately there is no way to control input gain from the device (a knob would have been nice) but it’s very easy to control from software you are controlling the device from from. Speaking of which, the Meteor is plug and play and worked seamlessly with all the software I threw at it – including GarageBand on the iPad 2 via the USB connector kit (an essential accessory for all musicians with an iPad). An inability to set levels was a bit of a pain with other apps such as Everyday Looper but it was easy enough to adjust via mic placement.

At £99 the Meteor isn’t as cheap as the built-in microphones you might have around the house but if you place any sort of premium on audio quality, ease of use or stylish design then it’s definitely worth checking out.

For more information check out the Samson website.