Thanks for that post, quite the journey! If you're looking for a new mic, I can recommend the Rode Procaster, it's a a dynamic mic which hardly does pick up any ambient noise whatsoever. I am very happy with it, it should be quite close to your mouth though (not everyone likes that), and I had to get a pre-amplifier (CloudLifter) for some extra gain. Without it, volume was a bit low. Here's a write-up of my set-up touching on the mic and some other stuff: https://www.morling.dev/blog/whats-on-my-desk/.
Thanks for the recs! It's so hard to decide when/whether to upgrade my mic. Would Rode Procaster be better than the Elgato Wave:3 (what I have now)? They seem to cost similarly.
I have never used the Elgato, so I can't speak to its qualities. When I was on the market for a mic though, I've found the Procaster to be on a completely different level than any USB mic I had tried (the Procaster connects via XLR, i.e. an audio interface is needed). It just gives you this nice soothing "professional audio" sound. No affiliations with the vendor btw, just really happy with the mic :)
