eMicrophones currently offers four USB Soundpods. These USB Soundpod are basically sound cards that sit outside of the computer and connect through the USB port. The advantage to using one of these when matched to one of our good microphones is that you are assured of the best audio input. This is because the analog to digital conversion that a soundcard does is performed outside of the computer and the audio is injected directly into the computer processing unit. Because many soundcard built into the computer are not well shielded, they can pick up on what the electronic noise and distort the audio signal. This will at best slow down the system and more often lead to poor accuracy.
Some people report poor performance when using a USB Soundpod. Almost universally, it is because of one of two things. The most common reason is that the USB Soundpod has not been selected as the default audio input device. If you're using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, just run the Audio Setup Wizard. For Windows speech recognition, you need to make the audio settings by right clicking the speaker icon in the lower right taskbar of the screen. The second most common reason for perceived poor audio with a USB Soundpod is that the USB Soundpod is connected to a front USB port rather than a rear USB port. On many computers, the front USB ports are auxiliary ports connected to the rear USB controller by an unshielded wire. An unshielded wire will pick up unwanted electronic noise and distort the audio signal.
The most important thing we have to say when comparing the USB Soundpod's, all yield the exact same accuracy from a good microphone. Although the differences are minor in terms of features, they should be taken into account based on your own personal style of computing. One other note, we highly suggest you order one of the recommended USB Soundpod's that eMicrophones matches with a particular microphone. For example, a customer from Australia recently ordered a Sennheiser ME3 microphone with a VXI USB Soundpod. It was a good thing we test every item going internationally before shipping because the VXI USB pod did not work with the Sennheiser ME3 without an adapter.
FEATURES/DIFFERENCES
- Andrea USB Soundpod:
This our least expensive USB pod. It is half duplex. This means only the audio from the microphone is input into the computer. Playback is accomplished through your built-in soundcard/speakers or a pass through cable that will redirect the sound from your sound card to an earphone on your microphone headset. This unit has been approximately 1 1/2 foot USB cable. - Andrea USB-SA:
This USB Soundpod is full duplex. This means that audio is passed from the microphone to the computer and playback is also passed through the USB Soundpod. This unit is very compact, about the size of a USB thumb drive. We recommend this for microphones that have both a microphone and earphone speaker and for portability with notebook computers. - Buddy USB 6G:
The Buddy is also full duplex and has a short cable, also good for notebook computers. In addition, it has an On/Mute switch as well as an LED to indicate it is connected properly. - VXI USB:
The full-duplex VXI USB Soundpod matches well to VXI microphones. It also has the longest cable of any of the USB pods which can be an advantage if you're computer is under the desk or far away.