The Griffin iMic is, in fact, not a mic at all. Despite poor naming, it’s a great investment for any podcaster looking to improve their sound quality One of the easiest ways to cut down on hiss and other noise is to avoid plugging your mic directly into your computer’s soundcard. Instead, you need to move the digital conversion of the audio away from the electronically noisy guts of your computer… enter the Griffin iMic.

This small, circular device takes any audio source, converts it and sends it into your computer digitally through a USB connection This bypasses the usually noisy audio conversion that you get when plugging directly into your computer’s mic jack. At less than $40, the iMic is a small price to pay to avoid the hissing and popping inherent to most internal soundcards.

The iMic is extremely easy to setup and use. Plug it in and it’s ready to go Your computer just detects it, no software installation necessary. The iMic shows up as a sound card in your operating system and can be used with any recording software on both Mac and PC.

The audio quality is good, especially for the price. I wasn’t able to find exact specification on the digital conversion. Certainly you can spend more money and get nicer digital conversion by buying a full-fledged UDB interface/pre-amp, but it would cost you a lot more. I’ve used the iMic on tons of recordings and have had no complaints in this department.

The iMic has a sleek and simple design that looks at home with any Mac setup. Aesthetics aside, it provides a USB connector as well as 1/8 ”

You can buy one here or, if you want to be resourceful, you can watch the following video about how to make one yourself. RSS readers may need to click through to view the video.
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The reason for the Mac purchase was to be more familiar with podcasting on both platforms. Many podcasters use Macs. I’ll be talking about podcasting for PC and Mac in my second book (my first book, on promotion, works independent of what computer you use).

I’ll be creating more Mac-centric content in the near future. I haven’t used the iMac to podcast yet, but I plan to soon. I’ve heard great things about podcasting with Garageband 3 and other the other iLife apps. We’ll see if they hold up to the reputation.

You can hear this mic in action on The Podcasting Underground Episode #4. I’ve now upgraded to a Shure KSM27 condenser mic. Most podcasters will agree that a good mic is the best place to invest your money at first to improve the sound of your podcast. Granted, to use a mic like the Shure SM58, you’ll need a mixer or preamp to plug it into.

If $99.99 is too rich for your blood right now, then I recommend the Altec Lansing AHS 302i. This headset can be found for around $25 at Best Buy and delivers great quality for the price. Listen to any of Michael Carrino’s interviews on the Digital MediaCast Experiment to hear it at work.