Blue Snowball iCE USB Mic for Recording and Streaming on PC and Mac
[{'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': " I got this mic for singing and I know many musicians are searching for this review so here I am. Sound quality is lovely, super easy to use and I haven't found anything to complain about. You can hear the audio yourself in the video. If you are looking for a mic on a budget then I 100% recommend getting this one!!"}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2017', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': ' I LOVE this microphone. And even though I already loved it, it got 200% better when I got a boom arm that clamps the desk and puts the Snowball mic next to my face. Got a pop filter too. Now I can record super clear sound... it even sounds pretty good with my laptop fan running and AC running the background (I remove background noise with Audacity). Also... in the video recording I did I have a major cold. Sorry.  Earamble Professional Studio Condenser Microphone Suspension Boom Scissor Mic Arm Stand with Table Mounting Clamp Suitable for Blue Yeti Snowball  and  Earamble Studio Microphone Pop Filter Round Shape Mic Wind Mask Shield Screen'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2018', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': "This is a legitimate review of a product I bought with my own money. Just putting this out there.\n\nThis is honestly the best PC microphone you can buy on a budget. I haven't found any better condenser microphones for a cheaper price that actually work well with a PC.\n\nPros:\n- Crystal clear sound\n- You plug it into your PC and it works out of the box, no setup needed\n- Only $40 - best mic in the price range\n\nCons:\n- Picks up some background noise, but you literally just adjust the microphone sensitivity on your computer and you're fine.\n\nI would definitely look into this mic if you are trying to get into doing YouTube or streaming. There are obviously better options out there, but if you are on a budget, this is definitely what you want to be getting. This microphone also works well with all PC games that I play (CSGO, PUBG, Overwatch), so if you would rather not have a headset mic when playing games, this works well.\n\nI would definitely recommend this microphone!"}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2017', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': " (My video is this review but spoken into this mic so you can hear the quality.) I have never had a microphone pick up my voice correctly. When I speak low, it fades out, when I go high, it cuts out. This microphone quite contrary catches everything I say without picking up weird background humming! I'm not like, some bonafide super special feller who knows that of which he speaks of when it comes to mic quality, but I find this instrument one of the best I've messed around with while dabbling. It's heavy! The ball core is like lifting a puppy. The stand that comes attached needs the screw at the bottom tightened to keep the legs mostly stable.\n\nI have chosen to completely ignore all the other reviews explaining safety and secure desk holds, and I just stick the dang thing anywhere. On a table, on my keyboard, shoved it in amongst a pile of pillows. Look, I'm not that professional when people aren't looking and my desk is literally my bed. He doesn't fall over, and he picks up my noises no matter where I put him. (Oh no I've gendered it. Next comes naming it, and that's when you know you love things too much.) I've been singing karaoke like crazy, and my poor long-range boyfriend who has hearing issues can finally hear my real voice, clearly and properly.\n\nI bought a pop filter, it hasn't arrived yet, but I'll probably need it, but for now, the pop pop pop isn't unreasonable.The red light on the front is obnoxiously bright, I just put a little tape over it. Simple. You need a quiet room for using this, but not too much of one. My heater going off doesn't register for instance, neither does my computer. I'm gonna crunch some fresh snow from outside so you can hear how crisp it is though, with a metric you can actually copy, probably. [I end up getting snow everywhere, on my keyboard, and my mouse, so I'm moving and dropping them here.]\n\nI love it, it was well worth the money (I paid $30 or so thanks to repackaging and used, but worth the $50 or so.) and I can already tell this little cutie (and it is cute, my aging mother saw it and started giggling and wanted to hold it) is going to be a fine part of my vocal life.\n\nEdit: I have no idea why the review is an hour long. It's only a 2 minute clip on my computer. I must've rolled a 1 on uploading."}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2018', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': 'I’ve been using this microphone for hours and all I can say is it was pretty much worth every penny. I’m gonna basically make this a subjective Pros and Cons review.\n\nFirst off, the Pros, it really is a professional quality microphone that gives you a clear and crisp sounding voice (most evident when making podcasts/voice-overs/livestreams etc.). The microphone only has the Cardiod voice pickup pattern, meaning it would only pick up sound in front of the microphone (remember this is the Snowball Ice, if you want additional voice pickup patterns such as an omnidirectional pattern, I suggest you buy the regular Snowballs or the Blue Yeti). Now, about the make; it’s build is actually pretty sturdy, the outer shell of the microphone is made up of a very heavy duty type of plastic which gives you the “it’s gonna last a long time” feeling. For 40 bucks this really is the best microphone you can get considering the price, if you can shell in a bit more you could even get the Blue Yetis but preferably if you are starting livestreaming like me, the blue snowballs are a great starter microphone. Oh, and another thing, this is extremely easy to setup, it is literally just what the box says: “plug and play” just make sure that the input device is set to the Blue Snowball microphone.\n\nAnd now for some Cons, the mic stand it comes with...oh dear lord, all I can say is that it’s pretty much garbage, it gives you limited adjustment and it keeps sliding, preventing you from obtaining an optimal position for your microphone; given this I would suggest also buying a microphone boom arm mount for your desk. Another thing I want to point out is the fact that this microphone can pickup plosives (those popping/distorting sounds microphones usually pickup when one pronounces ‘P’s or other loud consonants) really easily, so I might suggest getting a pop filter as well.\n\nSummary: all in all, this microphone can pretty much float your boat in almost any aspect, it’s cheap price should not fool you as it’s quality definitely does not reflect the low price. Highly recommended!'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2017', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-1 review-rating', 'review_body': "This is an updated review, as my journey with this horrible thing hasn't stopped. When I first bought this in 2017, the mic worked great for 2 weeks. After those 2 weeks, all my audio sounded like I was in a fish bowl. First and second time I had to return it: Amazon was wonderful about replacing the defective mics. Third time, I had to contact the Blue Microphone company themselves, who took 3 months to get back to me. They only replied to my email when I sent a follow up email wondering why there hasn't been a reply. I was finally able to send back the mic directly to the company. After about ten months of intermittently attempting to contact the company to demand a refund, I resorted to reporting them to the Better Business Bureau. At this point, I concluded that this mic is just a lost cause and the right thing to do is to just give me my money back if they were just going to literally ignore it for months after I already sent it back. While doing that, I learned that Blue Microphone does this a lot. I don't know where all these positive reviews come from, because they're a terrible company. Blue Microphone did not respond to BBB, but instead a new mic was shipped to me. I don't even want to use it because I'm over it and I'm just going to assume this new mic is a piece of garbage too. Based on the experience with the previous mics, why wouldn't I think that? What gets me is that I know I wouldn't have gotten any response from them if I didn't report them to BBB. Think about that: this company sold defective mics, customers send it back, and then you never hear from them again unless you push it. Blue Microphone, you're not a good company.\n\nBuy from Blue Microphone at your own risk. Look up other reviews about them from BBB. I wouldn't recommend anything from this company to anyone."}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2019', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': ' The Snowball is an excelent desk mic suitible for broadcasting on Youtube and Facebook! With a few tweeks it sounds as good as microphones three times the cost.\n\nGreat choice for the Budget minded as well as the quaility minded!\n\nGet a good deal on this scecific bundel I use at this link https://amzn.to/2NPSTJ9'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2016', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': "I really love this little microphone! It's perfect for podcasting - easy to set up, plugs into the USB port, and has nice, clean sound. I was being a bit lazy about my show at the outset, recording on my laptop's internal mic, but all the shows I listened to sounded so much nicer and I just had to take the plunge. My cohost heard the drastic change in my audio and decided to get her own soon after.\n\nSo, it's easy to set up. Good ol' plug-n-play technology. Works great for recording into Audacity or whatever your software of choice is. The design's cute, the sound is great, and I love the handy tripod - perfect for balancing on a desk. For a hobbyist, this is just all around fantastic.\n\nMy one complaint is so minor as to not lose any stars - the red light on the front of the mic to indicate it's on is a bit bright, and since I tend to get all up in my mic's business while recording it can be a lil annoying. I wish the light were on the side or back instead of right there on the top. I'm planning on getting some electrical tape to deal with this issue, though, so whatever. Just something to take note of.\n\nAlso note this iCE one doesn't have the little switch thing advertised on the regular Snowball. I decided to cheap out and get this version, which I'm happy with, but that one looks like it lends a little more flexibility. Which you choose depends on your budget and whim.\n\nJust a great mic. I'm really happy with this purchase, and it's made my show sound loads better."}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2016', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-4 review-rating', 'review_body': "This is without a doubt the best and most fun to use microphone I have ever used. When I received this, I tested it on the Skype thing that lets you hear your own mic, and for some reason it sounded much better than reviews on here and YouTube lead me to believe. I do very much like this mic, but it does have a couple design flaws that are just really annoying.\n\nPros:\nThe stand is very nice. I've seen some reviews giving the stand a bad rep, but that's kind of..dumb. It's a stand, it works, it has rubberized feet so it doesn't scratch up your table. What else do you want it to do, preform back flips or manipulate time and space? The legs are made of steel and the body is made out of a very nice and thick plastic. It's not made of solid gold and you're only paying $50.\n\nThe snowball can be easily disassembled. You can very easily screw the snowball onto a boom stick if you so choose. I like the fact that I can just unplug it very easily after I'm done using it. I'm a little paranoid and feel safer when I don't have the mic on and someone potentially listening to me.So being able to easily remove the power cable and again, easily, put it back in when I need to use it, is wonderful.\n\nThe device itself is gorgeous. Opting to pay $10 more for the black version (I do feel like I was scalped, though) was a great choice since it easily fits in with everything else on my desk.\n\nThe audio quality itself is pretty gosh darn great. I've very glad I opted for this instead of getting one of those XxxM0nTaInD3wxxX pro elite mlg gaming headsets, like what Razer makes, where you get poor headphones and a rather poor mic for $100. I'd recommend my route and get great headphones and this microphone. I plan on doing voice overs eventually for mods so this is going to be good for many things. But for the time being I use it for communicating with friends when playing games.\n\nCons:\nThe red LED. It looks terrible and is very intrusive. Yes, it lets me know that it's on. Know what else would've let me have this information? Any program that I'm using it for. Or, even, the microphone section under Recording Devices when you right click on the speaker icon if you're using Windows. I guess putting electrical tape over the light would work, or just not putting the light there in the first place would be even better.\n\nThe power cord. The cable you get in the box to power the snowball doesn't even match the device. In my case, I got a brown cable. Brown. Cable. Doesn't match a single thing, it would match my desk itself but it's such an odd and ugly tone that it doesn't even match that.\n\nOverall, I really do like this product. If it ever dies, I will be using it to play catch with my friends.\n4/5"}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2017', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': 'Love, love, love it!!! I purchased this microphone when I upgraded from a laptop to a desktop gaming console (which did not have a built in microphone like my laptop did). I needed this microphone for gaming and video editing purposes. My main concern from other reviews was that I would not have a crystal clear voice unless I was very close to the microphone. This is NOT true. I sit comfortably in my chair, a good two feet away from the mic and people online say my voice sounds crystal clear!!! I even tested playing music in the background while talking and my friend could not hear any background noise! Amazing! For $49 you cannot beat it! Keep in mind this is the ICE version so this microphone only has 1 setting, unlike its big brother which has 3 mic settings (but costs an additional $20).\n\n*******UPDATE 5/20 I still am in love with this microphone! I recently bought a pop filter to enhance my voice when editing and it just adds to the beauty of this mic. All of my friends online love the crisp tone that this mic puts out. Do not hold back, buy this thing!!!!'}]