Trying to avoid gaming headsets - Advice needed

[Vintage GT75]

I will try to keep this short but informative.

Budget: $500 or £400 can push another 100 if needed.
 

What i'm looking for....

Headset (close back)
Mic
Amp/DAC ?
Chat Mix

I do not care for virtual surround or any sort of surround sound.

Used for desktop gaming & communicating. 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Bombastinator]

So for sound in you need speaker (which it seems you want to attach to your ears.  No judgement). For sound out you need some sort of microphone.  Do you want this mic to be attached to the headset or freestanding?

[Vintage GT75]

I would prefer the mic attached to the headphones. 

I should have put "headphones" in the op and not "headset"

 

Would be willing to try any kind of mic if its within budget.

[Bombastinator]

There was a Linus “quarantine” video where he set up a home steaming setup and discovered the boom mic on the ‘phones he was using was as good as the pro level discret mic he had sent over.  Iirc the ‘phones themselves were open back so you may not want them, but the mic had a separate part number which may be useful to you.

[kokakolia]

@Vintage GT75 Your budget is so overkill! You can get serious audiophile quality headphones for that money. But what's the point, really? 

 

The Sennheiser HD 559 are just more than good enough and they're only £75 on amazon. I don't see the point in getting anything better... diminishing returns and all... unless you wanna go full audiophile. The 559 don't require much power, so unless your motherboard outputs nasty sound with static then a DAC won't improve much. Seriously. 

 

Things get tricky when you talk about microphones. There's no way you can neatly attach a mic to the 559. There's this thing called the mod mic. Or you can clip something like a Sony ECM CS3 to your shirt (many streamers use this cheap mic and it sounds great). Or use an external mic. 

 

[The Flying Sloth]

8 hours ago, Vintage GT75 said:

*snip*

I can help you with inputs, outputs aren't exactly my forte,
There are an insane number of cheap audio interfaces available that sound more than good enough for studio use, let alone streaming/discord. Behringer UMC22 is probably the best bang for buck at the moment in this sector. If you have lots of background noise a dynamic mic may be worth looking into though you will need an inline preamp to get the best gain possible (Klark Teknik CT1 is best budget option). If there isn't a lot of background noise a condenser mic such as the MXL V67G (Or AT2020 if you want to be a basic b***h) among many many many others would probably sound great. The Podcastage youtube channel is a good place for you to get an idea of the difference between these microphone designs and may help inform your choice of microphone by hearing the tonal qualities of options.

As for headphones, ATH M50x and Beyerdynamic stuff are probably what I'd end up recommending though I know very little about budget headphones, all I know is that the M50s and DT770s are prettymuch industry standard for studio recording use and my experience with them has certainly been quite positive.

I'm not sure what you mean by a 'chat mix' so can't really offer an opinion there
Hope that helped somewhat, it should come in well below your budget.

Sloth

[Dr0y]

Maybe you should look into some Z review, he's doing a lot of headphones. 

 

 

[rice guru]

23 hours ago, Vintage GT75 said:

I will try to keep this short but informative.

Budget: $500 or £400 can push another 100 if needed.
 

What i'm looking for....

Headset (close back)
Mic
Amp/DAC ?
Chat Mix

I do not care for virtual surround or any sort of surround sound.

Used for desktop gaming & communicating. 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

A dt 770 , fiio k5 pro, as well as a blue snowball would be under budget and a pretty killer setup 

[Dr0y]

As for gaming dac/amp I have the syba sonic which I recomment only if your onboard audio suck and if you're really on a thight budget.  Since that's not your case ou could look for something like the schiit hel, the mayflower ark mk2, the sennheiser gsp 1000, burson play, schiit fulla 3 and I think astro have a game dac too.  There's also some external sound cards from creative but I don't know much about them.  I wish I could tell you more about those but the only one I've ever tried is the syba and according to a lot of people it's not that good.  Instead I'll direct you to some other video. 

 

 

 

 

I'm considering getting rid of the syba and maybe get the schiit hel or the mayflower ark mk2. 

 

Hope that help

 

[kokakolia]

@Dr0yI'm still mad at Z reviews for over-hyping the Philips SHP 9500 because they're bad and aren't even worth their asking price (unless you exclusively listen to Hans Zimmer because everything else sounds terrible, and the bass is so lacking). There, I said it. 

 

Like Z reviews or not, don't just take his word as gospel. Watch/read other people's opinions as well. 

[CTR640]

31 minutes ago, kokakolia said:

@Dr0yI'm still mad at Z reviews for over-hyping the Philips SHP 9500 because they're bad and aren't even worth their asking price (unless you exclusively listen to Hans Zimmer because everything else sounds terrible, and the bass is so lacking). There, I said it. 

 

Like Z reviews or not, don't just take his word as gospel. Watch/read other people's opinions as well. 

That's why I don't use yt as reviews, in fact I use yt for unboxing But is the SHP9500 really that bad? I don't have it anyway but am curious.

Philips X2 seems to be very popular too and this year the X3 should be out.

 

For $500 you can indeed get serious audiophile headphone, just like this fool here enjoying his Amirons. Rice guru his recommendations are a killer setup.

[rice guru]

7 minutes ago, CTR640 said:

That's why I don't use yt as reviews, in fact I use yt for unboxing But is the SHP9500 really that bad? I don't have it anyway but am curious.

Philips X2 seems to be very popular too and this year the X3 should be out.

 

For $500 you can indeed get serious audiophile headphone, just like this fool here enjoying his Amirons. Rice guru his recommendations are a killer setup.

It's not bad but certainly not the can all the reviews make it our to be they are comfy decent sounding headphones and at the time of release definitely good value but they have no low end and the treble isore detailed than most at this price range but very harsh. 

[kokakolia]

1 hour ago, CTR640 said:

That's why I don't use yt as reviews, in fact I use yt for unboxing But is the SHP9500 really that bad? I don't have it anyway but am curious.

Philips X2 seems to be very popular too and this year the X3 should be out.

 

For $500 you can indeed get serious audiophile headphone, just like this fool here enjoying his Amirons. Rice guru his recommendations are a killer setup.

The Philips SHP 9500 is comfortable and produces sound which is detailed and airy. The nice things stop there. Detail junkies obviously picked the SHP 9500 and hyped it up to infinity. 

 

But the overall EQ is one of a sad deflated balloon. Shop piercing highs, dry boxed up mids and no bass. And since most headphone reviews only seem to care about detail and soundstage, the SHP 9500 got overwhelmingly positive reviews. 

[CTR640]

1 minute ago, kokakolia said:

The Philips SHP 9500 is comfortable and produces sound which is detailed and airy. The nice things stop there. Detail junkies obviously picked the SHP 9500 and hyped it up to infinity. 

 

But the overall EQ is one of a sad deflated balloon. Shop piercing highs, dry boxed up mids and no bass. And since most headphone reviews only seem to care about detail and soundstage, the SHP 9500 got overwhelmingly positive reviews. 

Sad to hear that. I can't comprehend why they only care about detail and soundstage, especially for such brands like Philips that has products of shit quality.

 

I guess can only trust What HiFi as a major reviewer. They made me chose for both Amirons and am in love with them and everything they said about them are correct.

[kokakolia]

18 minutes ago, CTR640 said:

Sad to hear that. I can't comprehend why they only care about detail and soundstage, especially for such brands like Philips that has products of shit quality.

The Philips SHP 9500 produce detail that only flagship products like the Sennheiser HD 600 can produce. It punches way above its weight. The hype is completely justified that way. The SHP 9500 gives you the taste of high end audio at a bargain price. And to a lot of people the bright & dry EQ with lackluster bass is a small price to pay. 

 

EDIT: Philips never intended the SHP 9500 to become an audiophile success. It was just a budget headphone for home use. Philips products with the "Fidelio" monikor are performance and "luxury" oriented. 

[CTR640]

9 minutes ago, kokakolia said:

The Philips SHP 9500 produce detail that only flagship products like the Sennheiser HD 600 can produce. It punches way above its weight. The hype is completely justified that way. The SHP 9500 gives you the taste of high end audio at a bargain price. And to a lot of people the bright & dry EQ with lackluster bass is a small price to pay. 

I see. That's why it's sort of bang for buck? Lack of bass is not something I'm willing to pay.

[Dr0y]

3 hours ago, kokakolia said:

@Dr0yI'm still mad at Z reviews for over-hyping the Philips SHP 9500 because they're bad and aren't even worth their asking price (unless you exclusively listen to Hans Zimmer because everything else sounds terrible, and the bass is so lacking). There, I said it. 

 

Like Z reviews or not, don't just take his word as gospel. Watch/read other people's opinions as well. 

Z is really often hyped about a lot of stuff so no I don't take all he's saying like he is some kind of god ... but he obviously knows a things or two about audio.  

 

I always look at much more than one review, if i can find them, when I want to purchase things.  It took me about 6 months and multiple youtube and written reviews before choosing my headset and about 4 months to settle for the syba sonic cause I was looking for something else but never found anything around that same price. 

[The Flying Sloth]

10 hours ago, rice guru said:

A dt 770 , fiio k5 pro, as well as a blue snowball would be under budget and a pretty killer setup 

For practicality alone I might agree with you but in this price range OP could easily avoid a USB mic , XLR connectivity would give a far greater choice if they wanted to upgrade further in future or change mic depending on bakground noise or their voice tone etc.

Also, Jesus Christ guys, arguing about whether or not one single reviewer overhyped a single product isn't going to help OP here, 

Sloth