Rode NT-USB

If you don't want the hassle of a dedicated USB audio device and are looking at a simple way to get very good audio into your computer, look no further. I use it to record basic audio tracks to a DAW and, even more so, to dictate very good audio to my computer's speech recognition engine. For pro recording work I think I'd still recommend a dedicated audio interface and an XLR mic (there are so many good bargains to be found), but for anything else this is a perfect (and portable) solution. And, from which I've seen and heard, the audio quality is considerably better than the more recent midi desktop version. Recommended

The microphone's audio sounds great for a USB mic. I specify USB because of the high noise floor (a louder 'static' that can be heard when turning up the gain too much) which usually comes with these kinds of mics.

You can plug in a pair of headphones to monitor both your mic's and your pc's audio, and how much you hear of each is adjustable with one of the knobs on the side of the mic.

I had to take one star off of the total and quality ratings because, even though the mic is 'plug and play' most of the time, sometimes the software driver will glitch out and the mic will stop working correctly until you fix it (by plugging it out and back in until it works again haha).

Otherwise it's a really nice mic for daily driving on your pc without having to mess with XLR cables.