Microphone Performance

I tested the microphone of the SteelSeries Arctis 1 by connecting it to my integrated sound card (ASUS SupremeFX S1220 audio codec), as well as a couple of other sound cards, such as the EVGA NU Audio Pro (PCI Express interface) and Creative Sound Blaster X3 (external USB sound card).

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 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 Rode NT-USB, a high-quality studio microphone:



This is the sound recorded by using the detachable microphone the SteelSeries Arctis 1 is supplied with:




Microphone quality surpasses anything one could expect from a $50 gaming headset. My voice is clean, uncompressed, and perfectly understandable. The bidirectional microphone capsule even picks up a fair amount of depth—you can easily hear that I don't sound tinny or telephonic. Even though the capsule isn't equipped with a pop filter, there are no audible pops while I'm talking. By listening to the following samples, you can compare this microphone to the microphones of a couple of other popular, inexpensive brand-name gaming headsets. To my ears, the one that comes with the SteelSeries Arctis 1 sounds the best.





One issue with the microphone is crosstalk—an anomaly where the microphone is picking up whatever is playing through the headphones, usually through poorly isolated internal input/output wiring. In other words, if crosstalk happens, your teammates will hear the sounds from your game, the music you're listening to, their own voices, etc. If not handled, it's highly distracting and very, very annoying.

Heavy crosstalk on the SteelSeries Arctis 1 exists even when the microphone is muted or physically disconnected from the headset. This is indicative of a wiring issue. After a bit of experimenting, I was able to find the culprit: crosstalk is primarily caused by the supplied dual TRS splitter cable. In the following two samples you can hear the difference in crosstalk when I'm using the supplied dual TRS splitter cable and after switching to a different splitter cable, the one supplied with the V-Moda BoomPro microphone. After a brief introduction, I stop talking and play a song in Spotify, so you can hear how much of it is picked up by the microphone. The microphone itself is muted, so the music you hear isn't being picked up by the microphone capsule.




The crosstalk is significantly more present when I'm using the supplied splitter cable. After switching to V-Moda's splitter, or several other splitters from my collection, the crosstalk, although still present to a certain extent, stopped being an issue while gaming. To verify these findings, I also tried using the SteelSeries splitter with the V-Moda BoomPro microphone. It caused massive crosstalk between the microphone and the headphones I connected it to (Oppo PM-3). After switching to V-Moda's own splitter, the crosstalk was gone.