First Impressions: The New Blue USB Microphone.
Blue in their marketing savvy wisdom has announced another snow themed USB mic just in time for the holiday season... again. it seems the masses have set up shop and demanded something more hardcore than a snowball, more unique than a snowflake. so yes, Blue has announced the most unique and hardcore of their USB mic line. a Yeti.

                                                                  

Here are the top 5 reasons to adore this mic.

1. it comes with everything, and this time we mean it.
it's a USB mic, we get it. woo-whoo no interface... how impressive. but it comes with a desktop mount and the cabling and the buttons. this means you need a boom if you want to stand, and a popscreen if you're prone to plosives. other than that the mic is plug and play. take it out of the box an you're set to record. now people who grew up in the CO1U riddled streets of today might not value this as much, but this is a hell of a feature in anyone's book. mine included.

2. I can't blame the mic for noise anymore.
THX certified doesn't mean a whole lot honestly, but what it does mean is that the recordings you get out of this will be the best you'll be able to get out of any USB based mic on the market currently. the impact of this of course is that you guys will have better quality if you can just finally focus on making your recording space quiet for once.

3. ...did I mention monitoring?
in general the biggest desire and complaint when it comes to USB mics is monitoring. people keep wanting this from USB mics and they don't understand that unless the source is the mic itself, it isn't going to happen without some delay. samson tried this concept and failed terribly with their poor excuse for an all purpose microphone (G-Track please die already) and I'm wondering how this is going to turn out. knowing Blue I think they maybe might have done a good job. looking at that THX cert I'm pretty sure they did.

4. holy cow, a mic with buttons!
I'm going to try as hard as I can to stay away from comparisons to samson's G-Track but in short this mic has buttons. a lot of them.

      a) a mute button
now for recording this seems a bit redundant, but many of the board members use mics for skype as well. a mute button for this application is a choice feature. no one wants to hear you sneeze into the mic, now with the press of a button, they won't.

      b) a master volume. 
as previously mentioned this mic has monitoring built in, this control will  adjust the volume of the mic you will hear in your monitoring setup (headphones). nice and simple, the way it should be.

      c) a master gain.
I'll say it, FINALLY! for too long people have been switching from mic to software volume control to mic, not understanding that there is only so much control you have from that end. introducing another control is a feature that USB mics have needed since their inception and I'm happy to see we finally have a mic that understands that.

      d) a 4 pattern selector knob.
now for the person who likes to do just one thing this isn't such a feature. but many of you out there love to sing as well don't you? or skype? this switch will help you too custom tailor the mic's sound to the application you're using it for, another choice feature in this all around mic.

5. with the options it offers, for the first time in history USB mics are a better deal than the standard ones.
putting all else aside, as Blue is known for it's quality regardless. the main problem with the industry's last all-in-one mic (G-Track) was the electronics and the design. it was hard to use and sounded terrible because of the features it jammed in the enclosure. the Yeti on the other hand has a THX certification which means by some miracle that the Yeti doesn't have that problem. by definition it seems that Blue has been able to include all of these features (and capsules) without losing the audio quality that sets this mic apart as the possible new standard for USB mics to come.
    If you were to buy a standard mic, and the hardware required to record with it while monitoring your sound you would probably end up sending somewhere around $180-200 to MATCH the options and quality offered in this mic, which by the way is starting off at an MSRP of $150. for the first time in history we now have a genuine alternative to the standard mic setup.

Overall I am impressed with this mic, something that has not been done since the CO1U first came to market all those ages ago. if you have the opportunity to try one out or pick one up this holiday season, be sure to do so. it's money well spent. read more about the Yeti at http://www.bluemic.com/yeti/