>>272 Whatever you choose get an XLR. You'll need a preamp/mixer for it, but you're going to want one of those anyways. If you're not looking to spend much the Audio Technica AT2020 is an excellent low-end choice and until this starts to pay for itself that's as far as I would go. Rode also makes a superb mic/stand/mount system, but they're expensive as fuck.

>>273 A whole preamp, really? Not just, like, an audio interface? Because for the interface, I was probably going to go with the Focusrite Scarlet Solo, seemed cheap and simple enough. And the AT looks pretty nice, but a little cheap. I can afford a couple hundred bucks for a real bang. I have an actual project I'm working on, so I want quality. Rode does indeed seem expensive af, though their A1 system is something to consider.

spend more money on acoustic treatment/isolation than the mic you can have a thousand dollar mic and interface and still sound like shit.

>>290 Do curtains help isolate sound, or is foam all you need for a good sound environment?

>>430 Curtains do virtually nothing. You will want foam. Any kind of foam will do; if you're okay with giving your information to the Chinese botnet you can get it off Alibaba for less than a dollar a square foot. Or you can repurpose old packaging foam and manually cut it into the classic crosshatch/pyramid shapes if you're strapped for cash, but acoustic foam has come down to a price where pretty much anyone can afford it these days. >>274 I used the wrong terms when I said "preamp" and "mixer". The Scarlett Solo would be fine for the purpose you have in mind. Always worth remembering, however, is that you need things to be as close to perfect as possible on the hardware end, because the more digital tricks you apply to the recording to more obviously fake it starts sounding. If you use or plan to use Cool Edit I have an excellent speech preset I use for spoken word dynamics processing, but again, making sure that your volume and levels are good before recording is key.

>>431 The first thing to understand is that there is sound treament, and then there is sound proofing -- two completely different concepts. People lump them all together and expect magic foam to do both. Treatment will reduce reverb and balance the frequency response. proofing / isolation will give you a better signal to noise ratio by cutting out background noise. Its a complex topic which I only know the very basics. acoustic foam doesn't do sound-proofing, it does treatment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSP-fT_VFGY bass traps are supposedly very useful treatment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZV-gxVpkGk Going for isolation/proofing generally requires building a special room with the right drywall/foam/paint combinations and might not be necessary. Try renting different mics from a music shop and monitoring on head-phones. At normal talking loudness you will be able to hear the room and outside that no amount of post-processing will fix. Even with perfect preamps, a perfect mic, a quiet signal (talking voice) bumped up to -6db will be super noisy. Even a CPU fan on a laptop will be extremely noticeable.

i have never used these mics but I hear they're good Shure SM57 SM58 SM58 SM58 SM58 AT4040 AT2035 AKG P220

>>471 These plus SM58 Beta and Rode NT1 is good entry level