MPCs and USB Mics

Hello guys, I am planning on picking up an Apogee HypeMic and I want to ask those of you who have used USB mics for your advice and opinions. I understand that the Mics can't record directly into the MPC through the USB and you'd have to use the Mic's headphone monitor to record instead.

So my question is, does doing this alter the quality of the Mic at all? Compared to recordings done directly through the USB connector or XLR cables? Do you find that using the monitor diminishes the quality of the recording or is it exactly the same? Considering that the HypeMic uses 3.5mm output, I am going to pick up a 3.5mm Stereo Jack > 2X (L & R) Phono Plug and hook that up to the MPC. Would doing this record the Mic's raw output without any compromises to the recording's quality?

Liondre231 wrote:I understand that the Mics can't record directly into the MPC through the USB and you'd have to use the Mic's headphone monitor to record instead.

This is incorrect. A class compliant USB mic can record via USB. The issue is that the mic takes over all audio output of the MPC as well (you cannot use the MPC's headphones or audio outs), so you have to use the mic's monitoring/headphone socket to hear the MPC output.

Whether the Hype mic itself works is a separate topic, there might be some user feedback in the USB class compliance thread. viewtopic.php?f=48&t=211654

Thank you Tutor, I had a look through the thread and the user benr mentioned that it worked but they couldn't control the overall output volume of the MPC, another user, JamesF97, also said theirs didn't work. I will get in touch with Apogee and see if they offer any insight from their end.

Anybody have an answer to this?

Regarding the headphone output of the mic being used as the audio input to the mpc

Don't do that!! The phono input is for turntables and is supposed to be a unamped signal!! Mpc has a preamp built in for that input.. you will blow it feeding it that hot a signal.

I use a tula mic and the USB works great, it had no loss of signal it should be better because it doesn't go through the mic converters. Only thing is tula had to write software to scale the conversion down to 44.1khz instead of 48khz because that is all the mpc can except. So make sure your USB mic can output in 44.1khz and you should be good to go directly in with USB. You just need to switch the audio interface option in settings to external audio interface and it will work.. plug a headphone from the mic output.