Microphone Performance

The unidirectional microphone of the Cougar Phontum was tested by connecting it to the Asus ROG Maximus IX Code motherboard. It uses an integrated sound card with the S1220 audio codec, including a number of software tweaks for suppressing ambient noise and adding various effects. All of this has been 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 ($50), and again turned off all the software features that could affect the sound of the microphone.

To review the microphone's sound and compare it 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. 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 was made with the Rode NT-USB, a high-quality studio microphone:



This is the sound recorded by using the unidirectional microphone the Cougar Phontum is supplied with:




It's not the most natural-sounding microphone, but is definitely the best one Cougar has thus far offered with any of their headsets. It doesn't have the harshness of the Immersa's microphone and is not as thin and telephonic-sounding as the one that comes with the Immersa Pro. It definitely won't do you any favors if you aim to impress your Twitch or YouTube audience, but should serve you well if Discord and TeamSpeak communication is the only thing you care about. My teammates had no trouble understanding me, and I was able to use the microphone in "Voice Activation" mode without running into any issues.

Let's compare it to the microphone samples of the Immersa and Immersa Pro. It's only fair to throw the HyperX Cloud Stinger's microphone sample into the mix as well since it is a definite fan favorite in the $50 gaming headset bracket.





To my ears, the Cloud Stinger's microphone sounds more pleasant than any of the ones utilized by Cougar. However, like I already said, the Phontum's microphone is definitely better than on the Immersa models.