USB microphone selection guide

What to buy

Trait	Why
Cardioid pattern	Rejects noise from behind (room reflections)
USB class compliant	No flaky ARM drivers
Hardware mute	Fast privacy during parties

The buying guide suggests Fifine K053-class desktop mics — any similar USB cardioid works.

💡 Tip: Place the mic below the mirror lip so glass reflections of the TV backlight do not aim directly into the capsule.


arecord -l
arecord -d 5 -f cd test.wav
aplay test.wav

alsamixer — select USB capture device — raise Capture until speech peaks −12 dBFS approx.
Re-run Piper calibration in M2C2.

Chipmunk voice
Wrong sample rate — force 48 kHz or 16 kHz per Piper pipeline docs.

USB resets
Use a powered hub if the mic browns out the Pi under load.