Tools for the serious enthusiast

podcasting
If you're serious about podcasting, take a good look at Samson's USB microphones. I have one of the company's USB studio microphones hovering from a boom over my desk, which I use for Skype-to-Skype Internet radio interviews. The sound quality has been so good you'd think interviewer and interviewee were in the same studio.

I have also been testing a hand-held Samson Zoom H2 Handy Recorder. It records crystal-clear sound to its SD card and has all of the directional microphone options, and the multiple recording formats, you'd expect in a studio mic. Unfortunately, the H2's small on-screen display, menus, and multi-function navigation buttons are a complete mess.

Unless you are a studio musician accustomed to traveling with your own mic (you can mount the H2 on a stand), I expect you'll be reading the manual to make sense of the H2.

Samson says its new H4n recorder includes several improvements over the H2, and its other portable mic, the H4. The H4n has better display and navigation buttons, for example. Navigating the device is now "more intuitive," Samson says.

The H4n also has a rubberized shell, so it can handle the jostling of a press conference.

Each of Samson's Zoom mics is about the size of Number One's communicator, in the pilot episode of "Star Trek."

You should be able to get about 10 hours of recording time between AA battery changes. The mic comes with an A/C adapter, a 1GB SD card, and a windscreen.

HEADPHONES

Personal stereo beyond the earbuds

The well-padded, cloth-lined, Psyko 5.1 Surround Sound Headphones look like gear for airline pilots. These gaming headphones, for the PC and Mac, contain five speakers, arrayed in the bridge across the top, with a subwoofer in each ear cup. A microphone hovers from a bar in front of your mouth.

Volume and bass controls are included, and you can close the ear cups to block out annoying distractions, or open them up to hear your friends and keep your head cool.

Psyko says the headphones put you in an audio sweet spot from which you can hear sounds as in real life. Rather than coming from the same location, shouts, shooting, and car crashes seem to come from every direction.

If you are all about immersive gaming, and can swing Psyko's crazy $300 price tag, you should be able to buy Surround Sound Headphones in coming weeks.

Your adventures in Resident Evil, I reckon, will never feel the same.