Samuel Leonel
July 20, 2009

Rating: 9/10

For anyone who had the frustration of trying to make a simple computer microphone (with a 3.5 mm plug) work on a Mac, this is the only relatively affordable solution in the UK market so far. Good thing that it is a decent product which works exactly as advertised and which requires no driver installation. It is completely plug&play if you don\'t count the small change you\'ll have to do in the audio setting to redirect the audio input/output to go through the iMic. The bad news, is that you\'ll have to fork around £35 to £40 (w/ Postage) to get it out there (and in all honesty there isn\'t much in this thing to justify 35 quid). But, if not for the Griffin iMic, you\'ll have to spend over £100 for a M-audio and other USB/Firewire audio interfaces that are designed for much more demanding applications. So, it comes as no surprise that I was glad to find the iMic for £32 (w/ Postage) here at Dolphin (not only for being slightly cheaper than at the competition, but also for the peace of mind that comes from buying from a reputable online store rather than dodgy eBay sellers).

Some Mac fanboys will try to rationalize the absence of a mic level input on MacBooks by saying that they already have a built-in microphone and that for professional audio you would need a microphone pre-amp anyway, but my main problem was VoIP. If you can live with the crappy audio quality of the built-in mic for VoIP applications such as Skype, then fine. But if you need anything that will not make you sound as if you\'re inside a bucket (or inside a rock concert if you try to use it in loud places), then you\'ll need the iMic to be able to plug in a decent external computer microphone. I\'m using a monaural Sennheiser PC 120 for various VoIP applications and its working beautifully.

The other affordable solution would be to find a good compact USB headset, which I could never find one that I liked (I could only find bulky gaming headphone cans that are not practical to tug along with my MacBook).

So, yeah... It would be great if MacBooks came with a mic level input like every other laptop on the planet does and thus not requiring yet another gadget to carry around in your laptop bag. But since it does not, thank goodness for the compact iMic! If I had a say on the pricing of this product, it should cost less than £20 (given the simplicity of this single purpose device --if you don\'t count the RCA/phono extension that comes with it and which I don\'t need), and for that I\'ll give 9 out of 10 stars for the product. But other than that, this is pretty much the only solution that makes sense to this particular type of problem.

trokara
August 2, 2006

Rating: 10/10

hook this up to a small mixer or phono source or mic and away you go - its a bit like Ronseal (tm) Hardglaze Varnish in the UK - it does exactly what it says on the packet. Thanks Griffin

Robin Thompson
June 12, 2006

Rating: 9/10

I'd been looking for a relatively cheap audio interface for a while, as I was finding my soundcard in my pc to be too noisy for my home studio set up. Nothing quite seemed to fit the bill until I stumbled across the iMic2. At £30 it was worth the risk if it wasn't suitable, so I ordered one. It was no risk at all and is an absolutely fantastic piece of kit. Whilst not aimed at the professional end of things, it is absolutley great for an amateur like me who wants good quality results. I can connect my mixing desk up to this thing and there is absolutely no background noise whatsoever - previously I had been suffering with a terrible mains hum. What's more, playback is just as clean, and excellent on headphones which has proved a boon when mixing. It is easy to set up too - Windows XP recognised it without a problem and defaulted to it automatically. My only gripe is that usb cable is bit short - only 18 inches so a cable extension is needed to get it where I want it to be. With a decent length cable this would have had a ten!