ROB WARMOWSKI: Hey, it's AES 2006 and we are here at Blue Microphones, and I don't have to tell you that you can see that very distinctive visual exterior design in the Blue Booth, and I'm here with Tony Price who is the Vice President of...

TONY PRICE: ...Electrovoice and Blue Microphones worldwide.

ROB WARMOWSKI: And we're here to talk about a few things about the Blue product line. I just want to ask, where does the visual impact of Blue come from?

TONY PRICE: Well, it's somehow inspired from some retro microphones from the past but also from very new cutting edge designs brought by Skipper Wise, who is a co-founder of the company, and Martin Saulespurens who's the other co-founder.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Terrific, terrific. And now you're here at AES and you're rolling out I think the podcasting perfected and that this is the podcasting -- the Snowball, right?

TONY PRICE: It's the Snowbsll microphone. Actually, it's been out for a little bit of time, but it's still new to the marketplace in the last several months it's come out. But would you like me to tell you a little bit about it?

ROB WARMOWSKI: Absolutely.

TONY PRICE: Okay. This is the first -- world's first professional USB microphone. It's a condenser microphone with two capsules; one capsule is cardiod, the other capsule is omnidirectional, and the idea is for recording for music and also for podcasters to have a really professional toll that they can plug directly into their computer without any interface. It requires no driver, and it gives you the same kind of quality you'd expect from Blue Mics all the way up to their $12,000 microphone system, the Blue Bottle.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Now, a lot of podcasts can suffer from the fact that there's not a professional audio environment. There's not a professional path, and mic technique might not be there with some these just beginning with podcasting so there's a lot of off-axis. Is that part of why you got an omni in there.

TONY PRICE: Well, the omnidirectional is for a couple of reasons. One is if you were having a discussion with people around the table, it's going to be really useful to put in the middle of the table and have both parties heard equally. The second thing is because in an omnidirectional pattern the capsule is on slightly different so you actually get a crisper sound in that particular position, so in this case it actually gives you two tonal characteristics as well.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Interesting. Now mounting of this, of the Snowball, would be on something would be on a --

TONY PRICE: It comes with a standard mic stand out. It comes with this little desk stand which is a retractable stand, and it has -- the mount itself can be rotated forward and backward so you can position the microphone to your liking if it's sitting on a table of if you want to -- one thing I should also say about the cardiod pattern is that there are two positions for the cardiod pattern. One, the first position is cardiod sensitive for desk application. The second one is cardiod -10 dB for more close proximity application for maybe for singing for example.

ROB WARMOWSKI: Sure, sure.