Microphone Performance

I tested the retractable microphone of the Thermaltake RIING Pro RGB 7.1 by connecting it to my motherboard's (ASUS ROG Maximus XI Formula) USB interface.

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



This is the sound recorded by using the retractable omnidirectional microphone the Thermaltake RIING Pro RGB 7.1 is supplied with.



As you can hear, the microphone sounds very muffled and is unusually quiet too, even with the gain set to 100%. My teammates had a hard time understanding what I'm trying to tell them, especially when we played louder multiplayer shooters. With that in mind, the microphone of the Thermaltake RIING Pro RGB 7.1 fails to deliver even in those most rudimentary tasks.

For comparison, here's how the microphones of two other recently reviewed USB gaming headsets sound. Both also come with a lower price tag compared to the Thermaltake RIING Pro RGB 7.1.