Meaning you can start out with USB, get the right equipment with a boom arm/shock mount/pop filter and down the road get an audio interface (DAC) to add some quality to the microphone. An XLR/USB hybrid microphone - Broadcast: The Audio-Technica AT2005USB is a microphone that has both XLR and USB.Comparing ~$250 budget microphones aren't going to have incredibly different frequency responses (again, exceptions apply). You can lose some of the "shiny-ness" of a condenser microphone, but in most cases it's not noticeably relevant. They also generally have worse angle rejection (ideally, your microphone isn't catch noise to the side and behind the microphone). Condenser microphones tend to have loud noise floors and require a room to be treated. Condenser: Condenser microphones are generally the most popular on the Twitch streaming community but, in my opinion, they shouldn't be used in most cases.The upside is, it's unlikely you'll need to replace your DAC anytime soon unless you grow into really expensive microphones. Meaning that for your microphone, boom stand, pop filter, and shockmount, you're tied to $150 to stay in your price range. A decent DAC (that outperforms the built in DAC of a USB microphone) is generally going to run near the $100 range. With an XLR microphone you'll also need a DAC. However, MOST XLR microphones are going to have minimal superior sound quality until you get to microphones at about $250+. I'll talk about recommendations in a second. Again, you can make a Yeti sound good if you have the right room or the technical ability to add a noise gate, EQ, compressor, etc, but it's a lot of extra work. In the Yeti's favor, it's a REALLY cool looking microphone - but it definitely doesn't punch at or above its weight in sound quality. The Yeti is a FINE sounding microphone, but it has a LOUD noise floor meaning that computer fans, A/C units, and just about anything else that makes noise will be picked up by that microphone without laying on effects. If you go with a USB microphone, I personally would suggest you skip over the Yeti. Generally speaking, a separate DAC is going to have superior sound quality to an integrated one (in the same way an integrated GPU is almost always worse than a dedicated one) - but there are exceptions, and at the lower price ranges the differences are generally minimal. With a USB microphone, the DAC is built into the microphone itself.
![behringer xenyx q802usb wont pick up my mic behringer xenyx q802usb wont pick up my mic](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UzhLxG-WsDc/maxresdefault.jpg)
For example, a USB > XLR converter box is $5 on Amazon, but the sound degradation is night and day worse than what you would get from a more serious DAC like a Scarlett Solo or something similar. With a USB-only microphone, the DAC (Digital-to-Analog Converter) is built into the microphone.
![behringer xenyx q802usb wont pick up my mic behringer xenyx q802usb wont pick up my mic](https://mediadl.musictribe.com/media/PLM/data/images/products/P0ALM/2000Wx2000H/Q802USB_P0ALM_Right_XL.png)
This is the compromise most streamers make. The downside is your audio quality will only ever be adequate and the quality of your headphones is tied to the audio quality of your microphone. They've got really good gaming headset microphones (but very few if any headset microphones are going to sound better than a "real" microphone), and you wont need any extra equipment.
![behringer xenyx q802usb wont pick up my mic behringer xenyx q802usb wont pick up my mic](https://medias.audiofanzine.com/images/normal/behringer-xenyx-x1222usb-1965181.jpg)
Look HyperX Cloud II or a nice Sennheiser set. So to start, what routes CAN you take (you kind of highlighted your options a bit, but I'd like to expand on them). I've used and tried just about every popular microphone/preamp (XLR & USB) up to about $500 (and quite a few over $500).
#Behringer xenyx q802usb wont pick up my mic professional#
A bit about me before I go on a rant: I'm a professional podcaster.