Today a friend asked me what my microphone setup looked like. He saw the mic arm and it peaked his interest. So why not share it in general…

History

My gaming headset broke and I had to fall back to my Sony MDR-7506 headphones and well, they are really comfortable and the audio quality is great.

I looked around at the prices for a new gaming headset and was quite shocked at how much they nowaday cost. Hmmmm, might there be a better solution? I do have a perfectly working headset currently and am only missing a microphone. FYI: the previous headsets microphrone had the nasty habit to pick up sound from the headsets speakers and I definately didn’t want that again.

At first I had seen review of the Blue Yeti and it seemed excellent. Then I saw its price, current availability and the price of the corresponding microphone arm and decided to do more research.

Then I came across the Audio Technica 2020 and only had to choose between the regular (XLR) one or the USB one. The AT2020USB+ version costs about 40 euros more and has more internal parts which can break (or cause issues) and cannot be replace by me. Well, I don’t really need that USB connector. And I’d rather have a superior audio setup, where I can replace the microphone in the future (if needed). Upside, the replacement microphone can be the cheaper XLR version ;-)

Hardware

List of parts (from a while ago):

• AT2020 microphone
• AT2020 shock mount
• TIE studio flexible mic stand pro, including XLR cable
• Neewer power supply
• Pop filter
• Microphone foam cover
• XLR female to 3.5mm cable

Price for everything was about 173 euro (microphone 90E, shockmount 15E, mic cover 3E, popfilter 6E, Neewer 25E, cable 3E)

Note: Comparable Blue Yeti setup would have been the yeticaster setup for about 209 euros, which is not reuseable with other microphones.