When it comes to striking industrial design, the team at Blue Microphones is right up there with Apple’s resident product-sculpting genius Jonny Ive. Their bold retro-cool styling always catches the eye, and has made Blue one of the best-known names in the modern business of making gizmos you talk into. A new Blue product always generates buzz, and for this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, Blue has cooked up a triple-threat of New Hotness that, in at least one case, may be of particular interest to the VO community. Here’s a quick peek at what’s new.

First up is the Tiki, a compact USB microphone that looks a bit like one of those retractable travel cable thingys that keep your Cat5 and USB leads nice and neat when you’re not using ‘em. For 59 smackers, you get a compact mic with two pickup modes that the company claims can reduce background clatter in noisy environments while capturing CD-quality sound. Probably not ideal for VO-to-go, but an interesting possibility for Skype or podcasting.

Next is the Mikey Digital, a new iteration of Blue’s compact mic designed for the 30-pin connector on the iPhone. The last Mikey upgrade was rendered incompatible with the late-model iPhones due to some updates to Apple’s hardware and software secret sauce. The new Mikey has apparently found a way to play nice with the iPhone4 and 4s models. Again, perhaps not the Magic Bullet for VO purposes, but Mikey’s back, and not a moment too soon.

Finally, the product of particular interest to VO people, especially all the voice talkers who post almost weekly on LinkedFace to ask questions about “a good microphone that’s compatible with the iPad.” The Spark Digital is a new version of the Spark condenser that has more of the traditional lollipop look of Blue’s studio series of mics. The new Spark works with either USB or iPad connections, and comes with appropriate Y-cables for both connections that allow real-time headphone monitoring. The plasticky Alesis iDock now has an all-in-one rival for the iPad recording crown. Heads up, local hero Dave Courvoisier -- if you haven’t already, make arrangements to visit the Blue booth at CES this week and shake down the Spark Digital. An apparently sizable segment of the VO community is eagerly awaiting a hands-on report.