First…let me tell you specifically what it is, if you don’t already know. The Shure X2U is basically an analog to digital converter that allows you to take a professional, higher end microphone that has an XLR output and plug it into your USB port in your computer. Here’s a picture of what it looks like:

You’ll see on the top of the pictured unit is the input for the XLR connector from the microphone or the microphone cable. And on the bottom is the USB output which then leads to the USB input on your computer, via a standard USB cable. (See the close ups)

Now, the picture is a bit small, but the thing that I really loved when I was ordering this was for the adjustments on the side. You can see 3 adjustment wheels on the side. The top one is to set the mic gain…the middle wheel adjust the volume in the headphones that can be plugged into the side…and the bottom adjustment wheel is to adjust the mix in your headphones of the audio coming from the microphone and any accompanying audio coming from the computer. In other words, you can lay down a music bed on one track in your multi track audio editor, and listen to that track as your recording your voice on another track. I LOVE this feature! Because so many times I’m doing a voice over, I’ve had to record it dry with no idea about the mood of the background music or effects. And that really affects how you read. If I’m reading along with the music bed, I can pace myself better to the music…I can get more into character or into the mood of the piece. So, this feature of being able to mix my voice and the audio on the computer in my headphones while I’m recording (and with NO latency problems!) this really was what pushed me over the edge to get this. Because in all reality…I didn’t really need to use one of my XLR microphones directly into the computer…because the Blue Snowball USB microphone is awesome…but I can’t monitor what’s playing on the computer.

Soooo….That being said….My BIG letdown with this product is that there is a noticeable hisss in the background. A hiss that is loud enough and noticeable that you couldn’t use a recording for any professional project. However…I was able to eliminate most of the hiss using effects within my audio editing software (Adobe Audition). There are several “hiss eliminators” within most programs on the market. Once you fine tune your effect to eliminate the hiss, you can set it up as a default setting and easily apply the same effects to future recordings. So, yes…it can work even in a professional setting.

With a cost of about $129 or so, I think it may be wiser to wait for the second generation and beyond of this product. If it came out of the box with a clean sound like the Blue Snowball, I would’ve said $129 was the bargain of the century. But for now, I unfortunately have to suges waiting. You know in the VERY near future Shure is going to come out with the newer version that will address this problem. Shure is known for professional quality and I’m “shure” this will eventually be a must have in every studio!

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