Using Two USB Microphones on a MacBook

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I'm attempting to produce a podcast on the cheap and I purchased two USB microphones. I had hoped to be able to run them simultaneously, but the MacBook recognizes one or the other, but not both. Tech Support at Mac tells me Mac doesn't make any kind of adapter or mixer that would allow me to use both mics at the same time. I've seen a bunch of thingies online that will allow plugging several standard audio microphones through a single USB port, but none that will allow two USB mics through a single port. Does such thing exist? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.
 
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MacBook Pro M1 • iPhone 14 Pro • iPad Pro • iMac Retina 27"
When we first started our podcast, I tried to connect two Samson USB mics to my iBook and had the exact same results as you did.

Supposedly, Tiger's Core Audio allows you to aggregate devices (see under Utilities --> Audio/MIDI) but I could never get it working. At best, I had really awful sounding audio from both mics or perfect sound from one.

The really screwy (and disappointing) part of this is that two USB mics worked beautifully on my PC running XP with Adobe Audition.

I spent a ton of time on various forums and with Apple Technical Support with no good results. To my knowledge, this has never been resolved for OS X.

I wound up selling both USB mics and buying an M-Audio MobilePre USB preamp and two standard Shure mics. This setup works perfectly on my iBook, MacBook, and PC. You can hear the results by following the link below in my sig.

Good luck!
 
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Thanks for the info. Actually, I was looking at an M-Audio product in the store today. I was hoping to avoid spending that much, but I'm not seeing any alternative. Those USB mics of mine will probably end up on Ebay.
 

cas


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How much do you want for them? n_n
 
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Sooper Fast!
Thanks for the info. Actually, I was looking at an M-Audio product in the store today. I was hoping to avoid spending that much, but I'm not seeing any alternative. Those USB mics of mine will probably end up on Ebay.

You're stuck then. It's an expensive thing to get into, but after the initial investment, it's not too bad. You can either pay about $200 for a firewire recording device with pre-amps, or about $100 for one with out preamps. If you get one without preamps, you're still going to have to fork out money for a mixer with preamps (because buying straight preamps at that price is going to get you two very nice looking piles of crap). You'll need microphones too. You can probably find microphones for about $30-$50 each, but they're going to suck. They'll work and you might not be able to tell if you haven't dealt with anything else, but if you buy two $100 mics, condensors or what not, it'll sound soo much better.

That or make due with one usb mic.
 

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