Microphone Performance

The microphone of the Khan Pro 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 which have 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 other 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 has been made with the Rode NT-USB, a high-quality studio microphone:



This is the sound recorded by using the boom microphone the Roccat Khan Pro is supplied with:




As you can hear, it's a nice-sounding microphone. Its sound isn't extremely open and airy, but I can't call it too compressed either. It's fairly bassy, bringing a feeling of warmth to your voice, which will undoubtedly be liked by many. The microphone isn't fussy about exact placement, so micropositioning isn't something you'll have to deal with. You can simply bend it towards your mouth slightly, which will be enough for optimal performance. Overall, the Khan Pro's microphone is one of its stronger suits. It can easily be used even for more demanding tasks, such as Twitch or YouTube streaming.

To appreciate it even more, take a listen of these microphone samples with other gaming headsets in the $100 price bracket. I also threw in the Roccat Cross microphone sample, so you can compare it to the Khan Pro as well:






To my ears, only the HyperX Cloud Alpha's microphone sounds better than that of the Roccat Khan Pro.