Microphones and Audio Information

I just saw a couple of comments on my post Recommended End of Year eLearning Tools Spending? that were asking about quality differences between a Blue Snowball mic and SHURE mics. While I wouldn't know the specific answer to this off the top of my head, I thought I'd show what I do to find a pretty close answer and some people who I could easily ask.

I start by going to eLearning Learning and then I search for something like audio which gets me quickly to a page that's a bunch of great posts and other items all about Audio in eLearning. The keywords on the left are highly related to audio as well, so I'll drill down to pages on Audio Voiceover or Audio Microphone. On the Audio Microphone page I scroll down to the Best of Posts and see a bunch of great posts:

• Microphone Round-up!
• Audio quality does matter
• 4 Simple Tips for Recording High-Quality Audio
• Microphone Review: Marshall MXL Studio 1 USB, USB.008, and USB.009
• More USB Microphone Reviews
• Better Late Than Never: Shure USB Microphones

Of course you could cheat and search just for Snowball and/or Shure and find some reviews. And make sure you read about creating the mini-sound booth shown below.