u/AnimatronX1

Context:
I am a beginner, self-made bass singer. I've been developing my voice for three years now and have been practicing some harder bass singing techniques (subharmonics, growl, throat bass). This summer I finally decided to invest in an audio recording set-up, so that I can listen to myself, perfect my skills and perhaps try doing a simple solo cover.

My father has given me an old microphone MXL 440 that has an XLR cable connection. I've tried it out with an audiomixer Eurotrack MX 1604A (Also my father's. He's got a lot of this old stuff.)

This whole set-up isn't very good though and it cannot be connected to my laptop (I mean it can, but it's complicated). Thus, I decided to purchase something new.

Dilemma:
I have quite a small budget of around US$250. Based on what I've found online, I could either:

Buy a good audio interface (For example: Focusrite Scarlet 4th Gen, Behringer U-Phoria UMC204HD, ...) and connect my MXL 440 to it.
OR
Buy a microphone with a USB connection (Rode NT1 5th Gen [US$200] seems quite good to me) and connect it directly.

Are microphones with a USB connection any good? Is it better to invest into a good audio interface or a good microphone? Can anyone help me decide?

[System Agnostic]

I am quite new to Foundry. Every feature I've tried so far works fine and I've successfully used it in a scene, except for Light Sources.

I've set up a simple scene for demonstration (see video). Global Illumination is enabled with Threshold set to 0.5. The actor in the scene is a basic Player Character without darkvision and his Vision Range is set to 0 (Basic Vision). Fog of War is also enabled.
Foundry: Version 14 Build 364
Game System: Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition

The problem is that whenever I click on an Actor that is in the scene, the whole screen becomes darker, but the brightness of a basic Light Source stays the same. From the Gamemaster's point of view it looks fine. The light smoothly fades into darkness. From the player's point of view, the darkness gets "darker" and so the light has a sharp edge to it.

I have tried changing the Attenuation, but that didn't help. Also, even when I set the Luminosity to 0, the edge of the light was still visible.

I know that I can set the Darkness Activation Range of the light to 0-0.5 to make it invisible during the night, but I don't want that. I think this "layer of brightness" around the Light Source might be the reason why it has the sharp edges.

Does anyone have any idea why is this happening and if the edge of the light can be made smoother?

USB or Audio Interface Dilemma

Foundry Light Source Edge Issue