Yeti

The Yeti is an inexpensive USB condenser microphone with headphone driver and zero latency monitor mixer. It got a lot of traction with Youtubers before they all ran off with the SM8. It is based around the CM6400 USB sound card chip, an opamp and an NE555 for the mute LED (even though the CM can drive the LED). It is side address (ignored by every youtuber talking into the top) and the three capsules let you switch from cardiod to omni and figure of 8.

The mic gets a bad reputation for murdering headphone users with bass attacks because there is no real subsonic filter and the desk stand telegraphs huge bass booms into the capsule. This mic is only usable on a boom arm, throw away the stand. Windows mixing devices crank up the digital gain to the point where the noise becomes unbearable - turn that shit off. There is a real sensitivity pot on the mic itself.

You can use the device as a sound card but there is no S/PDIF output as reported by pulseaudio, only analog headphone out with extremely average quality.

Problem	Solution
No power	the mini-USB connector has pads ripped off the board, because it sticks out from the bottom and the mic is heavy. Genius design. This is why you find many Yeti cheap on eBay. Buy a new mini USB connector and take some extra measures that the connector won't be damaged again by the mic falling on its own ass.
Device not showing up as audio device	EEPROM has failed. No idea why. There is a windows/mac tool that can restore firmware called Config6400.exe, I'm on Linux so I just made a backup of the EEPROM on the board: File:Eeprom HEX file.txt. example firmware restore using windows: youtube