Microphone Performance

The boom microphone of the Asus Cerberus V2 was tested by connecting it to the Asus ROG STRIX X99 Gaming motherboard. It uses an integrated sound card with Realtek's ALC1150 audio codec, which includes a number of software tweaks for suppressing ambient noise and adding various effects. All of the tweaks were turned off for this test in order to obtain the microphone's raw, unmodified sound. I also used an external USB sound card, Creative's cheap Sound Blaster E1 ($42), and again turned off all the software features that could affect the sound of the microphone.

To review the microphone's sound and to compare it to other similar headsets, I used the Adam A7X speakers and Shure SRH840 headphones, being studio monitors, connected to Audiolab's M-DAC, a high quality digital-to-analog converter that functions as an external sound card when connected to a PC. Testing was done in Discord, TeamSpeak, Skype, and Audacity, and I also used Audacity to record sound from the microphones. The sound was recorded with microphone sensitivity set to 100% and was not post-processed or edited in any way.

For reference, this voice recording has been made with the Rode NT-USB, a high-quality studio microphone:



This is the sound recorded by using the boom microphone the Asus Cerberus V2 is supplied with:




As you can hear, the microphone's quality is acceptable, albeit on the thin side, which will make you sound like you're talking on the telephone. It should be noted that it picks up a ton of static noise from the motherboard's integrated soundcard, more so than your average headset microphone. I was unable to get rid of the noise, even after connecting it to an external USB sound card, which normally does the trick.

With that in mind, the boom microphone is certainly decent enough for your Discord, TeamSpeak, and Skype sessions, but you won't be able to use it for podcasts, voiceovers, or live commentary for your Twitch stream.

Let's listen to what the microphones of a few competitors sound like. The audio clips below are recorded with an external USB sound card, which is the best-case scenario for a gaming headset as there are no grounding issue that could otherwise have the microphones pick up static noise from the system. Our SoundCloud profile also includes all the recorded clips when the headsets were connected to the motherboard, so do take a listen of those as well if that's of more relevance to you.







The secondary in-line microphone, the one you use when the Asus Cerberus V2 is connected to your mobile phone, sounds like this:



As expected, it's usable for having phone conversations and communicating with Google Now and Siri. That's all it's supposed to do anyway.