This is definitely one of the better-sounding microphones attached to a gaming headset I have run across in my career thus far. This is the sound recorded by using the bidirectional microphone the SteelSeries Arctis 5 is supplied with: The sound was recorded with microphone sensitivity set to 100% and was not post-processed or edited in any way.įor reference, this voice recording has been made with Rode NT-USB, a high-quality studio microphone: Testing was done in Discord, TeamSpeak, Skype, and Audacity, and I also used Audacity to record sound from the microphone.

To review the microphone's sound and to compare it to similar headsets, I used the Adam A7X speakers and Shure SRH840 headphones, them being studio monitors, connected to Audiolab's M-DAC, a high-quality digital-to-analog converter that functions as an external sound card when connected to a PC. I also used an external USB sound card, Creative's cheap Sound Blaster E1 ($42), and again turned off all the software features that could affect the sound of the microphone.

All of this has been turned off for this test in order to obtain the microphone's raw, unmodified sound. It uses an integrated sound card with Realtek's ALC1150 audio codec, including a number of software tweaks for suppressing ambient noise and adding various effects. The bidirectional microphone of the SteelSeries Arctis 5 was tested by connecting it to the Asus ROG STRIX X99 Gaming motherboard.