This mic boom doesn’t care if you shake the room

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Blue Designs compass mic boom
Imagine how professional you'll look with this on your desk.
Photo: Blue Designs

Podcasters, musicians, and haters of annoying noises rejoice. Blue Designs has come up with the Compass, a microphone boom that keeps your mic fixed right over your desk, your computer, your countertop, or even your ghetto ironing-board podcasting desk. Paired with Blue’s Radius shock mount, you need never worry about mic noise ever again.

Blue Designs’ Compass and Radius

If you ever cobbled together a mic setup for a podcast Skype call-in, or literally anything else that involves recording a voice while sat at a desk, then you will have experienced two problems: instability, and noise. The instability comes because you cheaped out, and are trying to work with your mic gaffer-taped to a camera tripod, or to the side of your iMac. And the noise is an indirect results of this: Every time you tap your keyboard, knock your desk, or just move wrong, the sound is transmitted through your makeshift stand and into the mic.

Boom, shake the room.
Boom, shake the room.
Photo: Blue Designs

The solutions to these problems are a) a proper stand and b) a shock mount to isolate the mic from pesky vibrations. Thus, your new boom will remove the BOOM from your recordings.

I like the new Compass because it looks dead simple, and the price is good, as these things go. It’s an aluminum Anglepoise-style arm that clamps onto your desk at one end, and offers a standard screw mount at the other. It has a channel for hiding the mic cable, and can be rotated and twisted into just the right spot.

Shock jock

The Radius III shock mount screws  to the end of the Compass and isolates your mic from vibration. It does this by suspending the mic in the smaller of two circles, which are connected to each other using stretchy cord, kind of like how a trampoline is stretched in its frame.

The result is a stand that lets you suspend a mic anywhere you need it, and which stops any bumps from getting to the the listener. If you only do the odd podcast, or you’re happy with the mic in your headphones, then you probably haven’t read this far anyway. But if you’re a little more serious, then this setup is not only functional, it looks great, and the price is quite good, at around $150 for the pair.

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