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Some days you just stumble on something you have been looking for for ages, but haven’t known what it is called or how to look for it. Today was one of those days for me.

Although I have some microphone preamps, they are all built in to other equipment, and not really suitable for portable use. I’ve been toying with the idea of getting some sort of small, battery-powered preamp and maybe taping it to a microphone along with a small flash recorder for ad-hoc interviews and such.

But so far I’ve not had much luck finding a small enough and decently-shaped enough pre-amp, and have been mildly worried by the thought of cables flopping about and giving a generally unprofessional look.

And then, following an unrelated link, I found the MayCom “MicTube". A battery-powered mic pre-amp in the form of a (somewhat lengthened) XLR plug. It fits straight into the cable socket in most dynamic or battery-condenser microphones and has a simple 3.5mm line-level plug on the end of a short lead,so it will plug straight in to any line input (such as my MP3 player/recorder).

Now I have just got to save up to buy it. At £125 it costs more than the MP3 player did. Sigh.

Read more at: Solid State Sound - Maycom MicTube

Compression is one of those audio effects that all the pros use but can be baffling if you haven’t spent a lot of time with expensive audio gear. It’s one of the things that seems to really count in getting that “professional” sound in a podcast.

With that in mind, I enjoyed reading an article recently introducing compression from dbx, who make a lot of audio equipment.

Read more at: Compression 101