Microphone Performance

The microphone of the SteelSeries Arctis 9 Wireless was tested by connecting it to the supplied wireless dongle and with a couple of Android smartphones via Bluetooth. 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 Audiolab 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 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 microphone the SteelSeries Arctis 9 Wireless is supplied with in 2.4 GHz wireless RF and Bluetooth mode:




Overall microphone quality is in line with what you'd expect from a wireless gaming headset. It's perfectly fine for all kinds of in-game communication and casual chatting with your friends, as well as phone calls in Bluetooth mode, but too compressed to be used for more serious tasks, such as YouTube voice overs or live streaming. The same can be said of most other wireless gaming headsets on the market, which you can hear by checking out the samples below. If you want a higher-quality wireless microphone, you can always go with the Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless (reviewed here) or splurge for the Sennheiser GSP 670 (reviewed here). Even the top of the line Arctis Pro Wireless uses this microphone. The same microphone is used by other wireless members of the Arctis lineup, which you can hear for yourself by listening to the samples of the Arctis 1 Wireless and Arctis 7.