Microphone Performance

The boom microphone of the Cougar Immersa Pro was tested by connecting it to a USB port of the Asus ROG STRIX X99 Gaming motherboard.

To review the microphone's sound for a comparison to similar headsets, I used the Adam A7X speakers and Shure SRH840 headphones, both 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. 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 the microphone's 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 Cougar Immersa Pro is supplied with:



The quality of the microphone is acceptable, but no more than that. As you can hear, my voice is a bit compressed - harsh-sounding - and completely without depth. That makes the microphone decent for Discord and TeamSpeak communication, but unsuitable for Twitch streaming or YouTube voiceovers as you'll want a warmer-sounding microphone for those. It should also be noted that there is quite a bit of background noise present when the microphone's gain is set to 100%. I strongly recommend you reduce the gain to 90%; the microphone will still be loud enough, but the background noise will quieten down. Take a listen of the following sample recorded with the gain set to 90%:



Let's check out a microphone sample of the "regular" $50 Cougar Immersa, recorded with the gain set to 100%:



It actually sounds better, a bit more open than the microphone of the Immersa Pro. However, it's the same microphone, only attached to a different sound card. In case of the Immersa, I used the Creative Sound Blaster E1 and turned off everything that could change the sound of the microphone. The Immersa Pro was connected to its own supplied sound card that obviously does some microphone processing, which doesn't necessarily improve the quality of the recorded voice.

Overall, if the microphone's quality is your main concern, you should be aware that there are headsets with better-sounding microphones available in the $80 price bracket. Here are some of them: