Throat Mic for PC Gaming?

Hardware and technical stuff
1

Evening all,

A few years back, I used to use a cheap headset/mic combo without using the ear piece. I’d just drape it around my neck and point the boom near my mouth. When that died, I just switched to using my web cam mic and … that just isn’t cutting it.

What I’m looking for is a throat mic. I don’t need the headset portion, my wife doesn’t mind TeamSpeak going through the speakers, but I do want to stop getting yelled at by my friends for crappy sound quality (my web cam is FAR too close to my speakers).

Does anyone have any experience with any of these? My google-fu is all over the place, pulling up actual SWAT mics, 2006 paintball products and the like. So I thought I’d try and tap into the Qt3 group think to see if anyone has had any personal experiences here.

Thanks!

~C~

2

Why not just use a headset?

3

I don’t want to wear anything on my head, they can be uncomfortable, and perhaps more importantly wearing one isolates me from the house/wife/family.

I’d rather stick with my crappy web cam mic than not be able to hear my wife :)

~C~

4

http://www.clearercom.com/pc_throat_mic.htm

5

That looks like an awesome idea. Anyone tried this? Curious how well it works. I hate that wearing my Sennheiser headset means I miss out on 5.1 sound.

6

Wasn’t there a Modern Warfare 2-branded throat mic for the 360?

Yes, there was.

The reviews are mixed, but it’s $50 less than the one Malcolm linked, and I imagine it would work with a 2.5mm-to-dual-3.5mm adapter, so you could connect it to your sound card.

No guarantees, of course.

7

This is a selling point!

8

That mic looks awesome.

I am very interested to know if anyone has used this particular Stryker mic before.

9

I have a clip-on condenser microphone for this purpose that I attach to my shirt collar.

Be sure to set whatever software you have to NOT send your microphone’s input to your speaker output. That’s how you get horrible, horrible feedback.

10

Zalman Zm-mic1 (try amazon). Not a boom/throat mic but a clip-on. Works excellent, quite inexpensive… $70 for a throat mic? good grief.

11

Why not a mic that sits on your desk? You can get a cheap one that still has pretty decent sound quality. I’ve used mine on mumble when I didn’t want to wear my headset and it’s never gotten any complaints, listening to the sound quality its very similar to the headset I use. It also sits about 2-3 feet from me.

12

I also use this, its a great mic and cheap.

13

I bought one of those Modern Warfare headsets as I use a set of Sennheiser wireless headphones when playing XBox. Everyone said I sounded faint, and the start of every sentence was clipped. Sometimes it didn’t work at all. Very cheap and nasty headset. Now I use the MS wireless one under the headphones. Now I have great comma quality, but it’s uncomfortable and kludgy, so if anyone has any suggestions they’d be much appreciated.

14

Thanks for the suggestion. I just picked one up and tried it out during a wow raid over vent. Everybody said I sounded a lot better (was using the xbox 360 wireless headset).

It’s like $13 shipped from amazon. It’s pretty amazing for the price.

You don’t even really have to clip it. I just swing it around the back of my neck and just let it hang near the top of my chest/neck and it works fine.