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Photo: Pete Cottell
M-Audio has put everything this person could need into a compact, stylish box with its M Track Duo HD package. It includes a dual-band audio interface, an M100 condenser mic, HD41 headphones, a mic clip, a USB-C cable to connect the interface to your computer or smartphone, and an XLR cable to connect the microphone to the interface—all for the low price of $200. Except for the microphone (we love this desk clamp boom arm stand from Innogear) and the unspoken confidence needed to speak into the microphone for hours on end on a variety of esoteric topics, you don’t need anything but what’s in this box to get you started. Connect a few things, fire up OBS or your favorite DAW, adjust the gain on the mic preamp, and get to work.
It looks like a lightweight plastic box that looks like a VHS tape or a self-help book you might buy at an airport bookstore. The front panel has two combo XLR quarter-inch jacks, both with separate lines and selector switches for switching instruments. A 48-volt switch provides phantom power for both inputs simultaneously, which is essential for powering an integrated microphone or and Cloudlifter if you decide to sit on PodBro and switch to a powerful microphone. There’s also a one-inch TRS headphone jack and a three-way selector that controls whether the mono, straight stereo, or USB signal feeds the two mono-inch jacks on the back of the box.
Each channel has its own gain robot on the top of the device, with a light below that glows white when the signal is present and red when the signal is cut. Each preamp has a gain of 55 dB on tap, which is enough to turn even the mildest of Bands meeting NPCs into listening, engaging speakers. The monitor’s motion is smooth and jitter-free until you hit the last 10 percent of its sweep, when some digital noise appears on and off as if triggered by a switch. This is a huge gain for any application due to the amount of cutting that can be started, so this is not too much of a concern for anyone who has spent 30 minutes or more playing in their bands and listening to the product.
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The condenser mic is well integrated with the preamp in the form. It is a unipolar large-diaphragm condenser mic, which in normie means a metal cabinet that covers the front of the mic and where you want to direct your voice, instead of the back. Condenser mics are hearing a lot of ambient noise than a dynamic microphone, which is loud and low. Condenser microphones work better at a little distance from your face than dynamic microphones, but you’ll need to increase the gain to pick up your voice at great distances. This also introduces background noise, which can also lead to embarrassing moments on Zoom calls when, say, your neighbor’s illegal little birds start to squawk in fear when the garbage truck comes down the block. Fortunately, Zoom has good noise canceling tools, so this was easy to deal with without additional plugins or tools.
The microphone picks up male voices well. I’m not fully trained in NPR’s difficult speech yet, but my professional patter broadcasts as clearly as a bell 6 inches from my face, and the gain channel reached about 3 o’clock. The microphone does not have a high-pass filter switch to transfer low-level noise from the crash pads to the stand or the microphone itself, so you must be careful to avoid high-noise pickups if you want maximum gain and more distance from your mouth to the mic.
