Reviving a bit of a dead thread here, but for my birthday I asked someone to get me a microphone so I could improve the quality of the audio on my commentaries for my videos.
Well someone got me a Creative Soundblaster Tactic 3D Alpha.
On Creative's website, they're £60 a piece and it is honestly the most wank piece of computing hardware I have ever seen, used, or owned. Ever. It's intended for gaming, not to be a standalone mic, but in gaming the mic is still pretty important, right? You'd expect it to be better than the mic that my Mac has built into it already, would you not?
Well it isn't.
When recording audio, with the mic volume on full, on playback, with the volume maxed out, my footage drowns out my voice. Even if it's just general background noise from the wind and stuff. I can up the volume in the editing process using my video editor, but then it has reduced clarity and sounds like I'm talking through a bag of crisps that someone is constantly rustling.
So I looked it up online, and there are some firmware updates. Or rather one, firmware update. So I downloaded that, with the description basically saying that it lets you up the mic sensitivity so people can actually hear you.
But it doesn't. It essentially ups the max mic sensitivity by 14%, which is basically nothing, and in my video editor that gives me the option to up the gain, pre-recording anything, by 6 units.
Upping the gain, makes the sound quality go to shit. It is not a viable way to improve a product.
In short, this is genuinely unfit for purpose and I can't believe they actually have the audacity to charge £60 for something, that by their own admission required firmware to work, and still doesn't work to a desirable standard after installing the firmware.
/Rant.
