Klark Teknik CT-1 + Fifine: How I Built Decent Sound Without an Expensive Audio Interface

I struggled for a long time. A very long time. First I tried writing and recording on whatever I already had. Then I tried squeezing the maximum out of old microphones. Then I watched reviews, calculated the money, doubted, calculated again. And in the end I finally decided: enough. I need a more-or-less decent setup that will properly capture my voice.

The choice fell on the Fifine combo (microphone + mixer) and the Klark Teknik Mic Booster CT-1.

Why exactly this

A lot of people immediately advise: “Just get a proper external audio interface.” I thought about that for a long time and came to the conclusion that for my tasks it’s largely pointless. I don’t need studio monitoring, a bunch of inputs, MIDI, or expensive preamps. I just need to record speech properly. And I had a very specific problem with that.

Studio dynamic microphones (and many “budget studio” ones too) are fairly quiet. And my voice itself is quiet and bass-heavy. So even on a relatively good mic I had to crank the gain very high, and the noise came up with it. The sound ended up either quiet or noisy.