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Endless headset woes, help appreciated.

Alex

Member
I've been having a hellish time with headsets over the past 18 months, here's a quick run-down, feel free to skip to the bottom if it's of no interest to you:

-Turtle Beach PX22, they're cheap, but I liked them. Decent sound, decent mic. I'm not all that picky... but snapped at the hinge. Returned them and when I opened the box the new one *already* had a hairline crack at the same hinge...returned that too.

-Logitech G930, lousy audio drivers that tried to enforce echoy surround usage. Couldn't use stereo without going through downmixing that made it sound worse than 5 dollar ear buds or by removing the logitech drivers and rendering all buttons useless. Gave this one to a friend who doesn't seem to care about the bad, reverby fake surround.

-Sony Wireless Gold, I wanted to keep these. They're technically nothing special, average sound, one of the worst sounding mics ever but they fit well, felt good, mic had solid noise cancellation and I appreciate a good wireless, stereo headset. Issue is that they're a step above paper mache and they have a notorious problems with the clasps on the hinges failing. I noticed early on after an online buddy snapped his, then I saw some bad reviews and posts about it so I babied mine to death, never even folded them... still broke. Sad Christmas.

HyperX Cloud, extremely good headset in every way... except it has a nearly unusable mic with zero sound cancellation and loads of innate static. Even ran it through a seperate USB DAC and it didn't help. About one of my only wanted features is a well behaved mic so they had to go back.

HyperX Cloud 2, recent trial, this one wasn't even mine but a buddy brought it over to trouble shoot because it has lots of random audio pops on high freqs for him on his PC... and mine too. This would be an incredible headset if not for that, it makes me depressed. I would buy these if they fixed that.

Ok, so I give up, I've considered an Antlion Modmic with some normal headphones but the cable management, noise cancellation concerns and the fact that I have a truly shit sound card puts me off since I'm not really an audiophile, just want the mic to be fairly clean of background noise and static.

What I would like is:

-Reasonable build quality, im fairly timid with my electronics but so many of these are built to break moreso than any type of product I've ever seen.

-Passable quality sound, i'm no audiophile so almost anything will do.

-A decent mic with good noise cancellation

-Either a decent little in-line USB soundcard/amp or suggestions for a sound card to pair with it.

-price range up to ~$150ish, although id be fine with a cheap ~40-60 one that did the job.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm really open to anything and I don't feel my demands are too high.
 

Nesther

Member
I hope my Gold's don't break, but yeah, another online buddy of mine had his Gold's hinge crack.
I didn't know the mic quality was that bad, because my friends actually tell me they usually hear me he clearest in party chat.
 

nbnt

is responsible for the well-being of this island.
Stay away from headsets. Go with open headphones, pair it with the Astro Mixamp if you're gaming on consoles.
 

Alex

Member
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000ULAP4U/?tag=neogaf0e-20

ATH M50 and grab yourself a self a cheap clip on mic, they do the trick better than any mic attached with headphones.

I did the clip on mic before, they're not for me. I had the Zalman one and it sounded really poor but more importantly it picked up everything from all directions. People say it's better but for me it was the worst. I play exclusively with friends and dont do push to talk so solid noise cancel is my one real concern.

Still considering the Modmic solution because it's supposed to have decent noise cancelling and i like booms but im concerned about my soundcard.

Edit: Saw your edit, will read up on that sound card. Thank you.


I hope my Gold's don't break, but yeah, another online buddy of mine had his Gold's hinge crack.
I didn't know the mic quality was that bad, because my friends actually tell me they usually hear me he clearest in party chat.

It's not unusable or anything, it's just kinda muddy compared to the others I've tried. It's going to be better than the pack ins for consoles or the really cheap ones, but wireless headsets tend to have worse off mics, in my experience and this one was the worst of the 3 wireless ones ive tried. Still wouldn't dissuade me if they lasted.
 
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