eli5 What does microphone impedance mean, what does it affect and do I need to care about it with a PC USB mic?
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Impedance is a way of measuring the resistance or efficiency of the microphone.
In traditional audio setups, you want to ensure that you match the impedance of your microphone to the following preamp stage. Doing it correctly means everything will work nicely and efficiently together, mismatch it and you may find it too sensitive or not sensitive enough, introducing issues like noise from gain stages and similar.
You do also have to be careful of different mic types, phantom power needs and other issues in pro audio setups.
When you shift over to USB equipment however, this is all taken care of by the manufacturer. The microphone itself will include the mic and preamp combined as one unit, and is designed to be plugged in to any normal USB port – which should be designed to a standard set of specs so that it will be compatible with any device also using USB standard specs (like your mic).
The point you would have to do your research would be if you moved over to a mic/mixer type setup, using a traditional mic with an XLR connection into a small mixer board/amp unit.
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