Sound Quality

The Sharkoon Skiller SGH10 is equipped with a pair of 40-millimeter dynamic drivers with a specified frequency response of 20-20,000 Hz. The specified sensitivity is 98 dB, which means you'll have no trouble driving it with pretty much anything you might want to connect it to.

For gaming headset frequency response measurements I'm using the miniDSP EARS headphone test fixture, probably the least expensive such device on the market. It consists of two miniDSP UMIK-1 microphones placed inside a pair of silicone ears and affixed to a steel headphone stand. It's a USB-powered device, perfectly integrated with the fantastic Room EQ Wizard (REW) software, which is used for headphone and microphone calibration, as well as doing the measurements themselves. Every single miniDSP EARS unit comes with its own microphone calibration files, which are loaded into REW before doing the measurements.

My testing methodology mostly follows the best practices of using the miniDSP EARS as covered in great detail in this article on Headphonesty. The most significant difference is that I'm using the updated HEQ compensation, where a subjectively neutral headphone would measure approximately flat. To compensate for minor seal variances, I'm measuring each ear until I get 10 usable results, reseating the headphones between runs. After I have my results for one ear, I apply a 1/12 octave smoothing and average the measured responses. I then repeat the process for the other ear for an idea of whether any channel imbalance exists.

You can explore my gaming headset frequency measurement database and follow its progress on my personalSquiglink. Let's take a look at the frequency response measurement of the Sharkoon Skiller SGH10, both averaged and for each channel separately.




One educated look at the frequency response graph will be enough to tell you that the Skiller SGH10 doesn't offer a lot in terms of sound quality. The lower midrange bump, particularly visible in the 300-400 Hz range, leads me to believe that the idea behind its tuning was to offer a headset that's going to focus on easy retrieval of details such as enemy footsteps, but the completely withdrawn upper midrange and presence region – I'm talking about the entire span from 600 Hz to 3 kHz, makes the sound muffled, boxed-in, and even hard. Top that off with a bass that's boomy, while lacking proper attack, what you get is a headset that has very little chance to reveal anything coherent even in the region where its response is boosted. There's simply too much low-frequency overhang for that.

Some may argue I'm expecting too much from a $25 gaming headset. So, instead of continuing to bash its acoustic performance, I'll focus on what can be done to improve it. If you're connecting the Sharkoon Skiller SGH10 to a device that has an equalizer, like your computer's sound card, focus on two things: reducing the bass and boosting the midrange. I've gotten decent results by a flat-out -2.5 dB reduction around 60 Hz, and -1 dB reduction around 125 Hz. The 1 kHz region can easily take a boost of up to +6 dB, but don't be afraid to boost the frequencies up to 8 kHz as well. If the noise floor becomes too high (you'll start hearing too much background hiss), you went too far. While these changes won't make the Skiller SGH10 magically sound amazing – it's next to impossible to get rid of the perceived hardness of its sound – it will end up sounding much less boomy and way more open and airy. If you have no way of altering its sound performance via equalization, it's best you look elsewhere; the default sound signature isn't one you should be exposed to, even for as little as $25.

Microphone Quality

The omnidirectional microphone of the Sharkoon Skiller SGH10 was tested by connecting the headset to the PC using the supplied USB dongle. To review the microphone's sound and compare it to similar headsets, I used the Adam A7X speakers and Shure SRH840 headphones, both of which fall into the studio monitor category. I connected them to the Topping A90 Discrete, a high-quality headphone amplifier and speaker preamplifier. The EVGA NU Audio Pro sound card handled the digital-to-analog conversion, connected to Topping's excellent unit with the AudioQuest Evergreen RCA cable. Testing was done in Discord 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 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 detachable omnidirectional microphone of the Sharkoon Skiller SGH10.



The microphone quality is perfectly acceptable. While it definitely doesn't offer "streamer quality," as the product box puts it, you won't have issues communicating with your friends while gaming. The lack of a mute switch or button is an obvious downside, but there's not much we can do about that. You can always physically yank it out of its socket in an emergency – that will definitely mute it.