Apogee doesn't support MiC on Windows, but it does in fact work
by Craig Anderton
Apogee's MiC is a fine-sounding mic for iOS devices and as a USB mic, for the Mac; there's a review of it here on Harmony Central. But none of Apogee’s marketing materials mention Windows, the company does not support Windows, and I was told by an Apogee employee that the company has not tested the mic with Windows. Well, after verifying how well it worked with iOS devices and the Mac, I took Windows compatibility as a challenge.
True, it doesn’t work—at least not in the same “plug-and-play” way it does with the Mac. But, there’s a workaround if you have ASIO4ALL v2 or higher installed. This is particularly appropriate for use with laptops, which is one of the likeliest applications for a USB mic anyway. I also tested this process with the Generic Low Latency ASIO Driver, and it worked too.
ASIO4ALL lets you treat a Windows computer’s internal sound chip, like the RealTek, as an ASIO device. As you can’t aggregate devices with ASIO, and MiC won’t work as a WDM device (which can aggregate interfaces), if you’re using MiC as the ASIO input you will need to use the internal sound chip as an ASIO output. However, also note that if you don’t care about monitoring the output, you can still just record into a program using MiC and not concern yourself with the audio output.
Plug the mic into your Windows machine (I tested this with 64-bit versions of both Vista and Windows 7, but not Windows XP), and Windows will install an appropriate USB driver. This is enough to recognize it as a USB device, but not enough to have it pass audio.
In your audio software’s preferences menu, choose ASIO4ALL as the audio device type (click on the screen shot to enlarge). There should be some sort of Advanced button or ASIO Panel button to access the ASIO4ALL settings; click on it. (There may be an intermediary window as well, depending on the program. The goal is to follow the same steps you use to access the control panel for your usual ASIO interface.)
After you’ve opened the ASIO4ALL configuration window, make sure that both MiC and the desired audio output are enabled as Devices. The screen shot shows the Speaker output as enabled, which is also selected as the default output in the Sound window. This is the output that drives the line out in most Windows computers, but of course, you could also use the Headphones out and set that as the default. Note that you can also choose the ASIO Buffer Size in this window.
Close this window, then close out any other configuration and preference windows, clicking Apply if needed along the way. When you arm for recording, MiC’s LED will glow green to indicate you’re ready to go. I tested this with several applications including Sonar, Sound Forge, and Ableton Live, and was also able to monitor through the program by using input monitoring—so Windows fans, it sure seems that you too can enjoy MiC’s fidelity and convenience.
Craig Anderton is Editor in Chief of Harmony Central and Executive Editor of Electronic Musician magazine. He has played on, mixed, or produced over 20 major label releases (as well as mastered over a hundred tracks for various musicians), and written over a thousand articles for magazines like Guitar Player, Keyboard, Sound on Sound (UK), and Sound + Recording (Germany). He has also lectured on technology and the arts in 38 states, 10 countries, and three languages.
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