Microphone Performance

I tested the retractable microphone of the MSI Immerse GH61 by connecting the headset and the supplied ESS Sabre DAC/amp 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 of them fall into the studio monitor category). I connected them to the 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 postprocessed 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 unidirectional microphone the MSI Immerse GH61 is supplied with.



Microphone quality is acceptable assuming you don't plan to use it for anything other than communicating with your teammates. My voice sounds somewhat telephonic but is completely understandable. Let's compare it to some other popular USB gaming headsets.






The Cooler Master MH650 (reviewed here) has a much more natural-sounding microphone, but the microphone of the HyperX Cloud Alpha S (reviewed here) sounds even more telephonic and compressed, which makes it worse than the MSI Immerse GH61. The Creative SXFI Gamer (reviewed here) is in a league of its own.

I also tested two microphone features offered within the Nahimic for Headset software driver. This is how the microphone sounds with the Voice Stabilizer feature active.



Voice Stabilizer aims to normalize the volume of your voice, which results in the microphone sounding louder. Since it adds no noise or audible artifacts, keeping this feature on at all times makes sense. As for Static Noise Suppression, I've tested it while typing on my mechanical keyboard. The first sample was recorded with Static Noise Suppression turned off, and the feature is turned on and cranked up as far as it can go in the second recording (you get a slider to set how quiet or noisy the room you're sitting in is).




Static Noise Suppression does a good job of filtering out background noise. Similar systems often introduce extreme compression and make microphones sound much worse, but not this one, so it's a good idea to use it.

One additional feature I'd love to see is microphone sidetone (monitoring). Unfortunately, it isn't available in the Nahimic for Headset software driver.