Home > Consumer Reviews > Griffin Technology iMic USB External Sound Card

First, let's describe what this is: it's a sound card. That means it offers analogue to digital and digital to analogue conversion on the device itself, and is capable of shuffling that data over a USB connection to your computer. It is _not_ a cable adaptor, which confused one previous reviewer; it is _not_ a "live" device - you can't use it as part of a studio monitor, which confused another. It is similarly _not_ a format converter. However, it _is_ useful for bringing in analogue sound to your Macintosh (or, in theory, PC).

The hardware itself is pretty impressive for the price, when dealing with line-level input. Drum captures are surprisingly crisp; piano capture is surprisingly lush; vocals are strong. It is _not_ professional equipment, but it's also not $300; the value for money is quite high. The input fidelity is significantly better than my Powerbook's onboard A/D converter, and the other, more expensive, card I have in our PC tower system.

On the downside, its analogue grounding and shielding is - perhaps unsurprisingly, given that it's a USB device - weak. In an RF-noisy area, you will probably pick up some noise that you won't hear on your stereo. I suspect this is where some complaints about hum have come from. I was able to create this problem at home, by playing with it. Insuring best possible ground connections on all other cabling, and adding some local shielding, can solve this problem if you live in an RF-noisy area. Similarly, turning off buzz-creating noise sources nearby - such as small motors, dimmer-switch controlled lighting, and so on - will help. This is not a disqualifying issue, but is one that should be taken into consideration.

On the other hand, the phono level pre-preamplification is simply poor - noisy and just kind of unpleasant - and the RIAA equalisation preset is iffy. If you want to use this device with a turntable, use your own first stage amplification to get it up to line level. (If you aren't in a band or an audiophile, what that means is: plug it into your stereo's "tape out" sockets instead of connecting your turntable directly to it.) Given that microphone input is similar, you'll probably want to use a powered microphone, or route your passive microphone through other equipment, before digitising.

As for the software: "Final vinyl" is mostly disappointing. As a data-capturing utility, it's adequate; the ability to set basic equalisation at capture time is useful and works well. It can be successfully used to extract individual tracks from a longer capture.

But as an editor, it is woefully inadequate. Even the simple track-creating task it was built for is laden with unpleasant surprises. Clearly, they did not throw significant testing resources at the software; it suffers badly from the "if you don't use it the exactly same way we use it, random things happen" problem often seen in products from smaller software houses.

_Many_ seemingly-reasonable actions put it into an unrecoverably discombobulated state. For example, trying to add a cue marker to the left of an existing cue marker confuses it irredeemably; you will probably end up with random cue mark placing, and when you try to start deleting cues, end up with a negative number of tracks. It is also easy to reorder random segments of sound in such a way that it does not, in fact, appear in the editor, but does appear in playback; I haven't found the pattern to that problem yet, but it is recurring and may involve selecting ranges for post-capture eq adjustment.

Most of these problems require you to revert to original capture data and flush the undo buffer, which means lost work. However, if you can figure out how _they_ use it, I suspect it works pretty well; but I shouldn't have to work constantly to figure out whether I'm going to trash all my work by moving a cue marker the wrong way, or whether trying to bring down levels at one point in a sample is going to reorder or copy other parts of the sample at random.

In summary: very good value for dollar hardware at line input level; less so for direct turntable input; and if you're thinking about buying it mostly for the software, get something else. I wanted it for the hardware, and as such, I'm pleased.

This device is a totally plug-n-play way of adding sound input capability to your Mac. It plugs into a spare USB port and accepts a mini mono mic/line input. G4 Macs, among others, come with a line in audio jack, but they have no mic input and can't amplify a mic enough to make it audible. So, if you want to use an unpowered mic for direct sound-in to your mac, this is a cost-effective way to go!

The driver came installed with Jaguar, so there was no installing to do - I plugged it into the USB port and the Mac OS immediately recognized it. It shows up in the 'Sound' pane of System Preferences and is easy to select. There's a handy level meter there, so you can twiddle the amplification just right.

I've used it for a couple months to DJ my live internet radio broadcast, which goes out over the "airwaves" as a 56K internet stream. I'm using it with a cheap Radio Shack combo phones/mic headset (nine bucks), and the sound quality is totally adequate. I'd agree with the manufacturer, though, that you oughtn't expect to use this for studio-quality sound; although I can't discern any distortion or hiss from the peripheral over my cheap speakers or headphones.

This device works best when plugged into its own USB port. I had trouble when using it on USB busses that already had a lot of activity.

It fails to get 5 stars because the cable is too short - only about 18 inches - not really even long enough to make it around to the front of the computer. Also, there's an occasional (once a week) bug/problem with sound degradation after the computer's been asleep. Unplugging and re-plugging in the peripheral fixes this problem, but it'd be nice if it wasn't there at all.

In short, if you need average quality mic-level sound input into your Mac, and price is important to you, this is the peripheral you need!

I'm with the reviewers who were put off by the lack of documentation that comes with the iMic. On the other hand, the Griffin Technology Web site is terrific and full of up-to-date information and how-to's for iMic users. For instance, there's a freeware product just out called Final Vinyl that I wouldn't have known about if I only had printed instructions to go on.

I've dubbed bunches of LPs and tapes using this thing. I don't need it now that my new eMac has an audio-in port, but on my old iBook it's been great. Plugs right into the USB port and gives me just the right amount of gain for recording my old Lps and tapes. Using Sound Studio, all I do is hit record, clean it up afterward, mark the points between songs and then throw the whole kadoodle into iTunes. Couldn't be simpler. Uses very little power so I can plug it into my keyboard. The only caution I would give is not to let the computer sleep while using iMic -- waking it seems to create a little buzz in the recording.

Have been using iMic for the past 3 months. It is a neat product with ease of use. It comes with a CD that has the 'Final Vinyl' software which is very useful for digitizing cassettes and vinyl records. The software extremely easy to use and it has the capability to split the recorded music into multiple tracks. I have ripped more than 15 cassettes with least effort. The quality of recording is very good too.

Here is how I convert the cassettes:
1) Play cassette on a deck
2) Connect the deck's output to iMic through a RCA-to-miniplug converter
3) Connect iMic output to USB port (I am using a Mac)
4) Set the iMic toggle switch to Mic
5) Launch Final Vinyl and set preferences to get audio input from USB port; record in WAVE format
6) Record, cut into tracks (using Cue feature), save into hard disk
7) Import into iTunes, convert to AAC or MP3; delete the WAVE files
8) Set the attributes for the imported tracks and synch with the iPod - I am all set to go!

iMic can also be used to connect audio output from the computer to an external speaker - I haven't explored that feature yet.

Overall: A very neat product and great value for money.

The iMic delivers well on simplicy and quality at it's price range. For a simple one mic recording, or LP transfer it is a bargain. I've used it for a couple years. However, trying to use it to overdub a live instrument into a multi-track recording program is tricky, at best. Latency--and an inconsistent latency, at that--is the catch. Latency is the time lag in the signal entering the AD converter, being processed by the computer and software, and finally making it's way out to your monitors or headphones. Using Garage Band 4 on my G4 Mac with dual 1.25 Ghz processors and ample RAM and disk storage I estimate a latency of well over 100 ms. That's equivalent to standing about 100 feet from your monitor. Worse, it's not a consistent "delay" you can sync up manually later. In record mode in Garage band it can sound like you are playing perfectly in sync with the tracks you have already laid down. But on playback, it sounds like you are either ahead OR behind by a split second, as if you have no sense of timing. That's right. Sometimes the iMic-Mac-GarageBand combo puts you ahead of the beat and other times behind. Reading up on blogs, it appears that the USB implemenation in the iMic is the key factor. While some USB AD devices claim "low latency" (and consistent latency!), the iMic is apparently not one of these. This will never pose a problem if you are doing a simple recording of one source. So, highly recommended for that application.
Perhaps other reviewers have had a chance to try it with a different cpu/software set up for multitrack recording, and can add comments.