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Department of Computer Science and Technology

Connecting USB microphones to a laptop or desktop machine is easy. But analog microphones, which are intended for connection to a camera, voice recorder or amplifier can be more complex, unless your computer has a dedicated microphone socket or you have a USB audio interface.

Plugging them directly into a laptop's combined earplug/microphone socket, such as the one on my MacBook Pro, may not work. Here's how I got around it:

Update, a few days later:

Even though the above solution works, it's almost certainly easier, if you don't have a microphone socket on your computer, to use a USB audio adapter, like this one.

I was hesitant about this, because I wasn't sure of the likely quality of the analog-to-digital converters in a cheap USB peripheral, but it turns out to work very well for normal use. That would be my recommendation now, if you have a spare USB socket!

 


Published by Quentin Stafford-Fraser on Wednesday 30th September 2020