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Help regarding microphone.. urgent

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nirmaldev

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I want to connect my 600 ohm dynamic mic directly to the pc, i guess through the line in port. Without an amplifier the amplitude is too low. My friend has a 40watt amplifier for his speakers. it has an input for mic also. Can i use it to connect my mic to the pc. Will there be any harm done to the pc?
Pls help...
(is there any other option to connect the mic to the pc, we dont have enough time to build a circuit only for the mic)
 
i said line in input because, i have heard that the mic in input is for connecting the cheap mics that come with the pcs. that they are not good for connecting dynamic microphones.am i wrong?
 
i said line in input because, i have heard that the mic in input is for connecting the cheap mics that come with the pcs. that they are not good for connecting dynamic microphones.am i wrong?

I must admit I've never had any success connecting mikes to PC's, no matter what the type (even PC mikes) they never seem to work?.

I seem to remember reading that mike sockets are based on the original Sound Blaster cards, and actually intended for carbon mikes?.
 
Most PC's are designed to work with electret mics, any mic should work, not sure why you've had trouble.
 
I think you're using Vista? Good luck finding it <smirk> But there is usually a 20db pre-amp that you can trigger on modern sound cards, hidden somewhere in the audio options. Make sure your audio drivers are up to date and not just generic or it may not be available.
 
I think you're using Vista? Good luck finding it <smirk> But there is usually a 20db pre-amp that you can trigger on modern sound cards, hidden somewhere in the audio options. Make sure your audio drivers are up to date and not just generic or it may not be available.

No, XP both here and at work, my daughters and wifes laptops run Vista though. Nothing hidden in the sound settings, and it's been similar on all PC's over the years I've tried mikes on :(

The in-built mikes in the Vaio laptops work fine though :D
 
I'm not sure if it's the audio codec or the machines themselves or incredible luck, but I've had a +20db boost option available on every machine I've used within the last 5 years or so.
 
I'm not sure if it's the audio codec or the machines themselves or incredible luck, but I've had a +20db boost option available on every machine I've used within the last 5 years or so.

Just tried on mine here, and yes it has - thank you for that, I'll have a look on the machine at work tomorrow :D
 
The bias current at the input of the sound card for an electret mic might cause the voice coil in a dynamic mic to be so far off center that it might not work.
 
I've never seen a PC that uses a dynamic mic, they're all electret as far as I know. I'd imagine a simple capacitor bypass for the DC bias would be simple enough if you want to use the PCs pre-amp. If you're using a dynamic mic on a PC it's almost always through a mixer board that provides line out levels, then you use the line in jack. The line noise and cross talk on a PC almost remove it from serious contention for high quality audio input though. The lineout/mic/linein crosstalk on most cards I've seen are so bad it's ridiculous.
 
If you want better quality audio, buy a USB mic.
 
I've tried dynamic mics on sound cards, and my results are as Uncle $crooge suggested.

The DC bias drove the voice coil out.
The preamp gain wasn't high enough.
 
so i wont get a decent quality audio recording on my pc sound card(its not music, just narration) , even if i use a preamp ? also my initial doubt was whether it would cause any harm to the pc? any idea abt that?
 
Like I said way back in this thread, if your amp has line outputs, them connect that to the line input of your PC and it will give you VERY acceptable quality - well above that required for narration.
 
The main reason PC sound is usually not that great is the length of the traces and the internal crosstalk on the audio codec chips. I used to be able to unmute an unused CD input on one machine and actually listen to my hard drive and some bus activity as a weird series of warbles and blips.
 
The main reason PC sound is usually not that great is the length of the traces and the internal crosstalk on the audio codec chips. I used to be able to unmute an unused CD input on one machine and actually listen to my hard drive and some bus activity as a weird series of warbles and blips.

Worthwhile using an external USB sound card because of that, you can get very high quality recordings in that way. I bought my daughter one, and she used it to record an acoustic stage she was involved in running on her old laptop.
 
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