Behringer B-1 Single Diaphragm Condenser Microphone, Silver

These mics get mixed reviews depending on users' expectations. Are these the best mics you'll buy? No. Can you buy better? Absolutely. Are they worth £40? Yes! If I'd spent £200 on these mics I'd have described them as noisy and disappointing, but these are not expensive high quality mics. They are budget mics, and as such they are great. I compared them to an AT835b (shotgun mic, worth much more), and for indoor use found them a good substitute with similar sensitivity. Size is the first thing that hits you, as they're look tiny at just 9.5cm long and 2cm wide. Outdoors, they're not so good as they have poor wind/pop rejection. They do have a little internal hiss if you wind the gain up, but they have a sensitivity of -41dBV, so you shouldn't need crazy amounts of gain, and the specs imply they are good for loud sources (up to an SPL of 140dB at 1kHz, 10dB more with the cut engaged - that's airshow loud). They are a little "toppy" above 10kHz, but you can EQ that out if necessary. I'm not disappointed with these. For the money you get a pair of functional mics, good for drums, guitar amps, crowd mics, and "off axis" speech (so your plosives don't pop the living daylights out of them) for indoor video (eg about 8 inches above and in front of a subject, out of shot).

This brand is astonishing value for money. I have bought other Behringer items. These mics come with a good protective carrying case and extra mounts. -10dB switched too! Recording of Gibson sj200 (strum) and a Martin OOO Koa (finger pic) were high fidelity! You could clearly hear my mistakes! Used the sound hole and 10th fret at c12" distance positioning (dual mounted on one stand). Obviously you need XLR cables and a phantom power recording apparatus. In my case a Zoom R16 with 2 phantom power channels (usable across 2 banks of 8 channels). Gain at about 7.5 and monitor channels flat. These are great value for money additions to your recording capabilities.

I recently bought a Behringer C-3 microphone ostensibly on the basis of the reviews at Amazon. I have not been disappointed and my band mates have also been very impressed. I bought it to try out as an affordable single mic solution with a small PA to re-inforce vocals in our acoustic string band. The first time out we found it re-inforced our whole sound, with very little in the way of feedback problems. We plugged it through a mic pre-amp/Phantom power unit (M-Audio 2 channel Audio-Buddy) and used a shock mount. We have also tried the mount included with the mic, which was fine and ideal for emergencies (who forgot the shock mount!). The sound reproduction with this set up is excellent - warm and realistic, which is just what we wanted, though a decent pre-amp is required. Another reason for buying this product is the pattern and filter switching, which were not available on a more expensive recording mic that we have tried. Here, the C-3 offers a good degree of flexibility, depending on the details of the situation we find ourselves in.The Behringer C-3 is well built and well presented, being complete with a bespoke mount and hard plastic foam lined case. It represents excellent value. The product came with an instruction manual in any language but English, so there's an opportunity to brush up on your Spanish or French. The English version is available here:[...]

I bought the Behringer Studio Condenser C-1U microphone to improve the quality of my home music recording efforts without going to the expense and complication of adding a pre-amp box. The selling point for me was the USB connection which is powered by phantom power directly from the computer.The mic arrived a month ago (great customer service from Blue Aran) and it has taken me a longish time to achieve acceptable results. The main problem (which I discovered is not unique to me) is that the mic is on the quiet side. To produce the flat, quality sound I was hoping for requires all relevant computer settings to be turned up to the maximum. In the course of doing so, I ran into problems with my Realtek Audio Manager. It is quite possible that the resulting glitches are due to my particular system components, but the fact remains that for me it was not quite the "plug and play" experience that was promised. I have e-mailed Behringer customer support a couple of days ago and have not yet received a response, so I cannot comment on that. One point I would like clarified is that the LED light indicating that phantom power is being received is always green on the mic (I have tried it in 8 different USB ports on 2 different computers) whereas the documentation says it should be blue. Whether this indicates insufficient power from the USB port is something I would be interested in knowing.On the plus side, this is a very solid and good-looking piece of gear, heavy and substantial in feel and offering the kind of convenience and low-cost solution I was looking for. It came with an adapter (but you still need to buy a mic stand) and a software CD. There is Juice software for podcasting, Kristal and Audacity for recording and editing. These last two are free software. Kristal's last version (dating back to June 2004) is still available for free download online but it's handy to have it on CD. As for Audacity, I prefer to use the latest version directly from Sourceforge.The best advice I can offer to anyone who is encountering similar issues to mine with the C-1U is to resist the temptation to shout or play into it at close range, as condenser mics are very sensitive to such assaults. Five to six inches away is the recommended distance otherwise you get distortion. What finally worked for me was to separate the input jacks in the Control Panel, Audio Manager (I'm running Windows Vista Home Premium), turn the microphone (input) volume to the maximum in Audacity (having given Audacity control of the mic), and respect the 5-6 inch distance for both guitar and voice. I then apply amplification and/or normalization to the resulting recorded sound wave. My research indicates that the problem of the low sound is common to other condenser mics of the USB variety, and I have seen suggestions that Vista is not very user-friendly in that respect. With my current set-up, I am happy with the sound I am getting, there is no hiss and I love the ease of the USB connection. The three stars rating reflects all the hoops I had to jump through to get acceptable results.Behringer C1U Studio Condenser Microphone with USB

Great microphone. Sound quality is very clear. Only thing I recommend is buying a pop filter to go with it to help clear up the sound a bit. I didn't use it for professional use, only for gaming and I got compliments on my mic quality numerous times.

The product is amazing and better than expected. However, Amazon has changed its delivery policy and leaves your package outside on the street without seeing if you are in. I spoke to the driver, and he said this is OK. I will not be using this service again with this attitude change