Microphone Performance

I tested the pivotable omnidirectional microphone of the Corsair HS80 MAX in wireless mode. To review the microphone's sound and to compare it to other similar headsets, I used the Adam A7X speakers and Shure SRH840 headphones, both being studio monitors, connected to the powerful EVGA NU Audio Pro sound card, acting as a DAC, and the Topping A90 Discrete high-quality (pre)amplifier. The testing was done in Discord, TeamSpeak, Skype, and Audacity, and I also used Audacity to record sound from the microphone. 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 Rode NT-USB, a high-quality studio microphone:



This is the sound recorded by using the microphone of the Corsair HS80 MAX after applying the latest firmware update, which brought significant improvements to microphone performance. I'm also including the Corsair HS80 RGB Wireless microphone sample for comparison.




Considering this is a wireless gaming headset, the microphone quality is good. The HS80 RGB Wireless was praised for its microphone quality, and while the HS80 MAX's microphone doesn't sound as good to me, it's still above average. I was able to communicate with others with no issues at all; my voice sounded loud and sufficiently clear. The microphone has some sort of "integrated" noise filtering, which reduces the natural tonality of the voice and causes some artefacting, but I see this as an acceptable compromise, as the microphone wouldn't be good enough for more demanding use cases, such as live streaming, even if it didn't include noise filtering.

Here are several other wireless gaming headset samples for comparison.