Microphone Performance

The microphone of the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 Wireless 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 ClearCast Gen 2 retractable bidirectional microphone of the SteelSeries SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 Wireless. For direct comparison, I've also added the Arctis Nova 7 Pro Wireless microphone sample.




As you can hear, the Arctis Nova 7 Wireless uses the same microphone as the Nova Pro Wireless (and the rest of the Nova gaming headset lineup). Some slight differences that can be heard can amount to variations in capsule placement, which the ClearCast Gen 2 microphone is somewhat sensitive to due to its bidirectional pickup pattern. Overall, this is one of the better wireless gaming headset microphones. It's plenty loud and perfectly intelligible, even when you find yourself in a noisier environment. Even without the supplied pop filter, there are no issues with plosives, nor is there any interference to report. Of course, you can get higher microphone quality from a wired microphone, which isn't going to sound compressed; that's a standard trade-off when opting for a wireless gaming headset.

Here are voice samples recorded by various other popular wireless gaming headsets, which you can use to compare them to the Arctis Nova 7 Wireless. Particularly interesting is the comparison to the SteelSeries Arctis 7 and Arctis 9, where you can hear how much SteelSeries has improved its wireless microphone quality.