I hate having a giant headset crushing my head and weighing on my neck. So for a long time I used ear canal headphones and a little clip on microphone when I gamed. You don’t have to wear a headset but you can still use headphones and a mic.
I rarely game needing a mic now so I’ve just adjusted to using a HyperX something or other I got a while back on deep discount. It’s super light and comfy so it doesn’t bother me nearly as much for the short stints I’m using it.
Thanks for steering me to the snowball. I got one for my wife as a Christmas gift and it works great.
Oh yay!!!
I did pick up a set of gaming headphones, Logitech Pro X, well built and sounded pretty good. Tried them for a week and took them back. Just can’t stand the vise on my head. The funny thing is my Yeti has been problem free since, almost like I scared it to work :)
Uh what did you get? HyperX something didn’t tell us if it’s a headset or standing mic
I bought some BT headphones a while ago. They’re very loose and plush around (not on top of) the ears. The only thing I can compare them to is a giant old-timey American luxury car with leather seats and room for like 12 people (a sofa with wheels, basically). They don’t have a mic though.
They do have a mic!
That’s what Amazon says I got but they’ve changed it up a bit, it was white instead of silver and the inline volume control is different on mine.
The one thing that’s come up over time that I don’t like is the material they used on the band across the head has that plastic coating on it and it’s peeling off. I don’t know if I’d call it fake leather or whatever but I think you catch my meaning.
They are surprisingly light and don’t squish my head, much lighter than they look. Every other set of cans I’ve had that were that big were much heavier.
Because, SteelSeries, I just want my headset’s battery light to work. I don’t give a shit about your stupid Moments clogging up my driver software.
Arise, thread! I too hate wearing a headset. I don’t talk much online. I just want a mic so I can use Voice Attack or something similar for single-player games. Is Snowball still the thing?
I just put my Yeti to rest as it kept having issues and was getting worse. I ended up with a Razer Seiren X which was on sale after Christmas. It was cheaper than the Yeti but more expensive than the Snowball (which is still a thing). Friends say I sound just as good just a little different, so far so good.
Depends on the acoustic pickup pattern but usually they pick up TOO much. Like keystrokes. Or other stroking.
Yeah, any quality condenser mic is gonna work best for voice if it’s very close to your mouth, but it will still pick up other sounds. The sole audio pickup pattern of the Snowball Ice is front-facing cardioid that lessens that issue to some extent, but if you’ve got a mechanical keyboard, your friends are likely to hear it better than they would on a modest headset mic. But you’ll also still get pretty rich voice quality even out of the cheaper Snowball when compared with the cheap mics most headsets haphazardly glue onto a stick.
Which quickly can lead down monetary rabbit holes of boom arms and shock mounts and pop filters…
I will say that a Yeti sitting on your hard wood desk ten inches from your mouth and six inches from your keyboard and on the same surface as the latter isn’t going to work to its ideal capability, but will still be fine if you’re okay with that. You’ll get echo-y chatter and vibration feedback from the keyboard and your voice can get a little hollow sounding if you’re too far away, even if you crank up the gain (which can also introduce static on the signal).
All of which, to be clear, can be totally okay for online gaming. I think most folks who do voice chat while murdering terrorists in the CODBLOPS are used to hearing their buddies’ gear clicking away in the background.
If you’re, like, streaming to Twitch and don’t want your viewers to have a nerd rage aneurysm over your sound quality, getting a good mic is definitely mandatory, but you’ll also need to invest in the extra setup to avoid the pitfalls.
I have my mic setup to push to talk on my right side mouse button so the clicking of the keyboard is limited. We only use TeamSpeak so setup once and we’re done. We’re also a fairly quiet group so not an ordinary group for sure.
I can confirm the increased noise level of keyboard & other things when using a dedicated mic. I’ve got a Rode NT and its sitting on the desk in front of me. My friends do ask me every now and again why I’m hacking away at my table, when all I’m doing is typing or putting down my coffee mug or something…
For any standalone microphone an excellent side purchase is a microphone stand to isolate desk noises. Many of the keyboard and other issues are from sound carrying through the desk and into the mic.
$26 on Amazon for a boom stand (does not attach to the desk,) and $21 for a clip stand that does. But I can tell you this is one of the FIRST things we do for execs at the office that refuse to wear headsets: an external microphone and getting it off the desk.