Acoustic Magic Microphone

I'm definitely directing this question toward Marty because not only does he know a lot about this sort of thing, but I bought both an Acoustic Magic Microphone and a USB Sound Pod from Emicrophones in the past. So here's my question: is it better to plug this microphone directly into a line-in plug on a sound card, or use the sound pod? Which produces the best results?

Thank you kindly, Marty. That is exactly the information I was looking for.  For the longest time I have been having a particular issue with all USB microphones, but specifically the Buddy Desktop Microphone. Any Input VOL above 10 causes a serious lag when you tell Speech Recognition to start listening. Often I will set the Input VOL, and SNR, all the way down to zero, and the microphone(s) still work. Is that normal? Another thing is that I still have the problem where Speech Recognition shuts off apparently because the buffer fills up, but I know that the Acoustic Magic Microphone does not do that when plugged into the proper port on my mother board's sound input. Is that particular issue only prevalent in USB based microphones?

I'm not really certain, Marty. I have had it for at least two years, though, so it is probably the 5G. Would it be written on the microphone somewhere?