A lot of recording talk revolves around the choice of microphone. The preamp is also huge in bringing the best out of the microphone! For fun I compared my first, inexpensive microphone, a Nady Starpower 1, to an 'industry standard' dynamic microphone, the Shure SM-58. I rubber-banded the two mics together, such that they were facing the source at the same angle. Both went into an Midiman Audio Buddy preamp, and then into my Imac using a Griffin Imic, and Spark ME software. Once in the computer I split the stereo channels into two mono recordings, and normalized each to 0 dB. I expected this to be a blow-out, and it wasn't, at least with my setup which is only recording 16 bit. Perhaps with a 24 bit setup the difference would come out more? I felt the less expensive mic sounded only slightly noisier, and a little 'brighter'. Actually, combining the two (with a little delay between the two channels) made a good combination.