Microphone Performance

The noise-canceling microphone of the Sennheiser GSP 301 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 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. The 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 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 Sennheiser GSP 301 is supplied with:




This is a great microphone, one of the best I have come across in my headset-testing career. It's very clear and natural, with no noticeable compression, popping or any other of the usual anomalies. This is very close to what my voice would sound to you if we were having a conversation in real life. It could do with a tad more depth, but let's not split hairs - the microphone is good enough to be used for serious Twitch streaming, YouTube voiceovers, and anything else you might want to do with it.

Here are samples of a couple of other microphones that come with headsets around the $100 price bracket:






As you can hear, the microphone of the Sennheiser GSP 301 holds its own against that of the more expensive HyperX Cloud Revolver and Cloud Revolver S, when connected to the same sound card. It also comes out as a clear winner when compared to the Corsair Void Pro RGB Wireless or SteelSeries Arctis 5.