ZealSound Studio Recording Microphone, Condenser Broadcast Microphone w/Stand Built-in Sound Card Echo Recording Karaoke Singing for Phone Computer PC Garageband Smule Live Stream & YouTube (Gold)

The media could not be loaded. I am not a techno-geek and I had a little trouble getting the mic to work the way I wanted. I am creating videos for YouTube featuring me singing karaoke. When I was having problems getting started with the mic I simply contacted the ZealSound folks and they bent over backward to give assistance. They even offered to replace the mic if necessary. Customer service at ZealSound gets an A+ from me. So does the mic.Now, here is the little bit of help I want to pass along to you. I do not use special audio recording software for my videos. Recently, I purchased a Logitech c922 HD webcam. I downloaded the free software from the Logitech site and opened up the Realistic audio program that came installed on my Dell Inspiron desktop computer. I am operating Windows 10 Professional. The Logitech software allows me to choose the mic I want to use (either the one that is aboard the webcam or the one plugged into the Realistic audio software (in this case the ZealSound)). The master volume control is cranked up to the max and the system mic was chosen as the input (the ZealSound). Also, the ZealSound mic volume is cranked to the max. The resulting sound is rich and mellow and sounds like a radio DJ. I am impressed by the quality. Thank you ZealSound for making such a professional quality product available to me for such an amazing price (at the time of purchase I received a 25% discount from ZealSound and free shipping through Amazon Prime. You just can't beat that deal anywhere!!!)

My daughter needed to record an audition piece with her viola for an audition. It had to be an unedited video recording. The video on our phones was fine but the audio was not up to par. I really needed something I could plug into my phone to supplement the audio. I was not expecting to get this amazing mic for the price. I assembled the stand in 1 min and then you slide the mic in, voila! So easy to get started. The mic comes with every input you would need. Aux cable, charger, audio hook ups. I could have used my converter for a lightning cable but I decided to use my S9 to record. It was the easiest part of this process. We were in a small studio and there was a strings class next to us. I positioned the mic on the piano out of frame but close to her. This microphone picked up every note and every breath of my daughter but was just far away enough that it didn't capture the sound next door. It was awesome, like it targeted her sound. The sound experience was transformed from using the phone audio. When I used the phone audio the sound volume was lower (proximity) and it missed the highs and lows of the notes. There was also a small amount of white noise. The sound with the microphone was rich and comprehensive. I could not believe the sound it was able to produce. Amazing!

The sound was really nice, and I liked how simple it was to set up (just plug in and go). But the sound kept cutting out, so when I'd go to edit a video I recorded I'd find that there were sections I had to re-shoot, or in some cases I had to re-shoot the entire video, because the sound would cut out for a split second and you'd miss parts of words or entire words.I think it had an especially hard time with the short A sound as in "backpack." That seemed to be the sound that would cut out most often. I don't know if that was an issue with an over-zealous noise canceling feature or what.I didn't want to return it, so I kept trying it, but I ended up spending twice as much time recording and editing videos and I'd usually have to settle for minimal cutting out on re-recordings rather than no cutting out. So I did end up returning it.UPDATE: After I returned the product and got a refund (which was easy), ZealSound customer service reached out and offered a different mic model for free, which I felt was too much because I'd gotten a full refund. But they were insistent, so I said okay. They sent it out to me really fast and this new one works great so far. No complaints, and I like the way it looks better than the first one I bought.Because of this great service I'm updating my review from 2 stars on this microphone to 4 stars, because great service like that deserves to be recognized and rewarded.