Topic: bias voltage for mic in on a laptop?

[gkatz]

SSIA. I have an asus X83vb x-2, any ideas if laptops in general have any 'plug in power'?

Thanks,
Gkatz

[gkatz]

anybody?

[admkrk]

what do you mean by "plug in power"?

i can't think of any standard computer that will power a mic that needs it.

[gkatz]

well I was just wondering if perhaps it does not have any, or very little, or too much. I ran some SP-BMC-2's into a church BB and then into the mic jack onto my computer. recording in cubase 5, I seemed to have a good amount of hiss, even with the mics split about 3 feet in an outdoor setting.

[admkrk]

one thing you have to remember about running mic in on a computer is you're stuck with the soundcard doing the A>D conversion.  laptops just have a chip and are not designed for handling music, just things chating. if you plan to record to your laptop, your best bet would be to get a preamp and use the usb/firewire port for input.

[Shadow_7]

+1 interface.  Onboard audio for most computers generally sucks.

Baring that you can get a battery box, just in case your soundcard doesn't provide plugin power.   Probably desirable anyway as the laptops power is probably not consistent given it's other demands.  Although price wise you could just get a Zoom H1 or H2 and bypass the computer completely for the same cash.  And those AFAIK provide plugin power too.

I have a battery box.  The difference between that (cheap) mic with the batt box and with just the laptops plugin power is pretty dramatic / noticeable.  But I have an interface, a field recorder, external preamps, XLR mics, and other things which makes that mic and batt box kind of moot for most uses.  Although 600 hours on a single battery can prove useful in lower level stuff like security monitors and stuff.