Microphone Performance

The microphone of the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3 was tested by connecting the headset to the PC using the supplied USB-C cable. 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 Creative Sound Blaster X5 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 retractable bidirectional microphone of the SteelSeries SteelSeries Arctis Nova 3.



According to the technical specifications, SteelSeries is using the same retractable ClearCast Gen 2 bidirectional microphone we saw on the Arctis Nova Pro and Nova Pro Wireless. It performs admirably. My voice is clear, with no traces of compression or background noise. Even without the supplied pop filter, there are no issues with plosives. With that in mind, the Arctis Nova 3 is perfectly capable of handling your Discord sessions and virtual meetings. Should you want to tweak the sound of your voice, you can play around with the 10-band microphone equalizer offered within the SteelSeries GG software suite or use the premade profiles. Most of them are very subtle, though, so you'll have to resort to manual tuning for the best results.

For comparison, here are microphone samples recorded on some other popular USB gaming headsets. After listening to those, it becomes even more apparent that the Arctis Nova 3 is one of the better choices.