Microphone Performance

I tested the retractable microphone of the Mad Catz F.R.E.Q. 4 by connecting it to my motherboard's (ASUS ROG Maximus XI Formula) USB interface.

To review the microphone's sound and compare it to similar headsets, I used the Adam A7X speakers and Shure SRH840 headphones (both fall into the studio monitor category). I connected them 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, Skype, and Audacity, and I also used Audacity to record the 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 the Rode NT-USB, a high-quality studio microphone:



This is the sound recorded by using the retractable omnidirectional microphone the Mad Catz F.R.E.Q. 4 is supplied with.




The Mad Catz F.R.E.Q. 4 uses the same microphone capsule as the analogue F.R.E.Q. 2. As such, microphone quality is acceptable for the price, but by no means spectacular. My voice is completely understandable and maintains a certain level of depth, but lacks airiness. The recording is loud—you don't have to push the gain above 85%.

Unfortunately, I can't ignore some microphone-related issues. Whenever the microphone isn't muted, it for no apparent reason picks up quite a bit of sound coming from the headphones—the sound definitely isn't leaking through the ear pads. Because of that, your teammates will hear themselves talking, which they'll find very annoying, and rightly so. There's also the poorly implemented ENC feature. It introduces a high level of voice compression and effectively kills any traces of depth, so it's best left alone. You can listen to the microphone quality with the ENC technology turned on in the sample below.



Here's what the microphone sounds like with and without ENC when we throw some background noise into the mix. In this test, I'm talking while typing on my mechanical keyboard equipped with Cherry MX Red switches.