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Which Headset Has the Best Microphone?

RaynerHandrian
By RaynerHandrian
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Go to solution Solved by Raintech,

From a useability perspective, I'd honestly not suggest a lavmic, more fragile, more hassle to take on/off, has a bit of a skill ceiling to choose strategic placement points where clothes/collars/limbs wont rustle into the mic, and you might run into compatibility as alot of popular lavs have a TRS connector which isn't designed for plugging into a PC. 

Modmic is a great option if you're happy with your current headphones and just looking to add a microphone to it. It's literally purpose built for you scenario, and has great quality.

For example alot of standalone mic's like the blue snowball retail for around 50~60usd, so depending what issues you're having with the mic, you could consider getting a boomarm or stand for the current mic to upgrade it's useability? Again this depends on what you have and issues you're facing.

As for headsets with decent mic's, for purely gaming and voice chats, you will find the vast majority of headset mics at that price range will be acceptable; It'd honestly be a shorter list to point out the ones with subpar audio quality than the ones with adequate quality. A dedicated mic for gaming has always been pretty overkill in my experience. Generally no one on voice calls notices the difference between a "good" mic, and a simple "average" mic, especially after compression with discord's OPUS codec

Honestly, the best thing for maximising your outgoing Discord/VOIP call quality in my experience is just trying to minimise background audio, as none of your friends will appreciate hearing your keyboard sounds, mouse clicking, or even hearing you breathe into the mic (which happens often with headset mic's). Hence why standalone mic's benefit alot IMHO from boomstands to bring them up and away from your keyboard, and lav mic's could be a bad idea depending on your seating position, as having the lav closer to your keyboard could result in more keyboard noises.

Basically, easiest solution is the modmic. Buy it, slap it on, and you're done. Mic quality is well above average, and like I said above, VOIP's compression will render anything better, or any of the snobby "hi res audio" stuff completely moot. In my experience the modmic sounds alot warmer and breathes more life into your voice after compression, but again, that's my personal opinion, and your friends may think a warmer audio signature of the mic sounds worse to them.

Otherwise, if you need to buy a standalone headset, as long as you're not looking to record audio for hobby/professional media work, don't stress about the quality of the mic too much. As long as reviews generally call the microphone "clear", your discord buddies probably won't notice much difference in quality. Yes your voice may sound different as microphones all have a distinct sound signature, like warmer or cooler, but that doesn't fall within the range of "better or worse". It's just different. Instead think of the other, much more important aspects like comfort(important!), build quality, audio quality of the headphone part itself (VERY important) and other design features of the headset, like close back or open back.

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I'm tired of using a dedicated mic setup and would rather to use a headset with a good microphone for gaming and voice chat. Do you guys have any recommendations for headsets with best microphones?

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41 minutes ago, RaynerHandrian said:

70$ or less

 

At that price point any headset mic is probably going to be worse quality than your dedicated mic.

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Do you already have headphones? Maybe a modmic would fit your needs? Or try and find a used Sennheiser headset. 

PC Audio Setup = Beyerdynamic DT 770 pro 80 ohm and Sennheiser pc37x (also for xbox) hooked up to Schiit Fulla 3

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2 hours ago, Middcore said:

 

At that price point any headset mic is probably going to be worse quality than your dedicated mic.

How about Cooler Master MH630? on Rtings said it have great mic, or Hyperx Cloud II?.

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1 hour ago, weez said:

Do you already have headphones? Maybe a modmic would fit your needs? Or try and find a used Sennheiser headset. 

Yes, I'm looking for a used headset as well, but in terms of using modmic as an alternative, I believe I could use a lav mic as well.

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From a useability perspective, I'd honestly not suggest a lavmic, more fragile, more hassle to take on/off, has a bit of a skill ceiling to choose strategic placement points where clothes/collars/limbs wont rustle into the mic, and you might run into compatibility as alot of popular lavs have a TRS connector which isn't designed for plugging into a PC. 

Modmic is a great option if you're happy with your current headphones and just looking to add a microphone to it. It's literally purpose built for you scenario, and has great quality.

For example alot of standalone mic's like the blue snowball retail for around 50~60usd, so depending what issues you're having with the mic, you could consider getting a boomarm or stand for the current mic to upgrade it's useability? Again this depends on what you have and issues you're facing.

As for headsets with decent mic's, for purely gaming and voice chats, you will find the vast majority of headset mics at that price range will be acceptable; It'd honestly be a shorter list to point out the ones with subpar audio quality than the ones with adequate quality. A dedicated mic for gaming has always been pretty overkill in my experience. Generally no one on voice calls notices the difference between a "good" mic, and a simple "average" mic, especially after compression with discord's OPUS codec

Honestly, the best thing for maximising your outgoing Discord/VOIP call quality in my experience is just trying to minimise background audio, as none of your friends will appreciate hearing your keyboard sounds, mouse clicking, or even hearing you breathe into the mic (which happens often with headset mic's). Hence why standalone mic's benefit alot IMHO from boomstands to bring them up and away from your keyboard, and lav mic's could be a bad idea depending on your seating position, as having the lav closer to your keyboard could result in more keyboard noises.

Basically, easiest solution is the modmic. Buy it, slap it on, and you're done. Mic quality is well above average, and like I said above, VOIP's compression will render anything better, or any of the snobby "hi res audio" stuff completely moot. In my experience the modmic sounds alot warmer and breathes more life into your voice after compression, but again, that's my personal opinion, and your friends may think a warmer audio signature of the mic sounds worse to them.

Otherwise, if you need to buy a standalone headset, as long as you're not looking to record audio for hobby/professional media work, don't stress about the quality of the mic too much. As long as reviews generally call the microphone "clear", your discord buddies probably won't notice much difference in quality. Yes your voice may sound different as microphones all have a distinct sound signature, like warmer or cooler, but that doesn't fall within the range of "better or worse". It's just different. Instead think of the other, much more important aspects like comfort(important!), build quality, audio quality of the headphone part itself (VERY important) and other design features of the headset, like close back or open back.

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