RunningWithBulls.com - The curse of Sanfermin

Not because of any defect in the Logitech Internet Chat Headset, no its a fine and very nice product, and works perfectly inside its spec’ed limits with a Windows PC.

No, I say this as you will not be able to use the microphone with the Powerbook, as the PB requires an active (electret condenser) microphone, as the Powerbook cannot supply a phantom power supply to power the condenser microphone in the Logitech headset. Nothing wrong with condenser mics, other than Apple don’t like them.

As one person in Apples discussion forums quite rightly said:

This is one of the only things that has me upset with Apple. They *know* that people will see the “audio line-in port” and believe it’s a mic port, but it’s not. It takes audio from a powered source like your stereo set or something. The manual even says “You can also connect external microphones or other audio equipment to the audio line in port,” but what they don’t tell you is that 98% of mics out there won’t work (just like they don’t tell you that many of the DVD-Rs won’t work in your Apple drive). You not only need a powered mic, you need a powered mic rated for a specific amount of db’s which I can’t find in Apple’s specs anywhere (someone said 60).

People see the audio line-in and say, oh cool mic. What it should be called is line-in, or unpowered line-in.

Anyway, what you need is either an electret condenser (powered) mic, a pre-amp to power the mic and then plug it into your (unpowered) line-in, or else a USB microphone (these devices usually are powered from the USB port), something like the .Audio 45 USB Headset.

That’ll learn me for believing *everything* Steve says. Sheesh.