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Are USB Headsets better then dual prong ones?
Magic Pink
Tur-Boner-FedRegistered User regular
Tur-Boner-FedRegistered User regular
Because I have no idea.
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826104281&cm_re=logitech_usb_headset-_-26-104-281-_-Product
And I love it. it's comfortable, blocks outside noises, and the microphone sounds excellent. I like that muting is as simple as raising the microphone, that there's a volume rocker on the earpiece and it's loud.
Yeeeaaah... I'm looking to spend maybe 10$ on the thing. Not 99$. But thanks for the recomendation.
Yeah, I was in some tumble down computer place last night and they had shelves of the things, some as low as 4.99.
The headset I'm currently using I remember getting from Radio Shack and it's worked great for over a year now. Website says $40 but I remember getting it for cheaper. Might've been on sale.
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3166831&numProdsPerPage=60
Yeah, anything you're using for $10 is going to be shit. However, at that price point you definitely want to go with straight 3.5mm into your audio ports, because whatever they're spending on the USB circuitry (and amplifier circuitry) is coming right out of the mic/speaker quality. If you want it as cheap as possible, you want it to be doing as little as possible. No free lunch, and all.
I'll never, ever understand why gamers will spend $200 on a videocard and $200 on a monitor then balk at spending more than $50 for audio. Even if you're on a budget machine, you should still be allowing more than ten freaking dollars for sound.
Most people (myself included) are far less discriminating about sound than about visuals. I mean, it's really not hard to understand in a way: if you can't play a game for shit because your frame-rate is constantly sliding into single digits, that's a problem you're going to want to do something about, but not having rich, theater-quality sound is something most people can live with so long as they can hear well enough to process all the basic necessary audio cues.
But again, if a person's only going to spend $10 on any kind of hardware/peripheral purchase I have a hard time seeing why they're even worried about relative quality.
Depends on what you're referring to as "audio". I won't bother buying a discrete sound card ever again probably because the on-board audio on most modern mobos are really quite good, and the last Creative card I had gave me so many damn headaches that it wasn't worth the time. Maybe if someone is doing things with sound editing they'd want more professional equipment, but even for someone like me who cares immensely about the quality of audio coming out of my machine, the onboard audio these days is really quite nice.
If you're referring to headphones/speakers then yeah, I understand what you're saying. It breaks my heart every time I see someone going and buying a $20 set of "speakers" (in quotes because they might as well be tin fucking cans) at wal-mart or a $10 pair of headphones.
Man...respect your shit. Respect your ears and respect the people making the music and sounds you're hearing. Shell out for a really nice set of headphones or speakers and enjoy it. I drive my wife nuts when I buy a new pair of headphones because I usually buy five and put them through the wringer to determine which I like best, fit on my ears the best, has the best clarity of sound and bass, and then return the rest. She claims she can't hear the difference in most of them but I don't comprehend how that's possible. I've bout headsets that are $100 a pop and even at that price range, some still sound like shit compared to others and to me, it's painfully obvious. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a person who will argue about speaker wiring and whatnot, but I will go to my grave touting the importance of good speakers, be they headphones or desktop speakers.
Buck up and shell out the cash for something that will make your audio shine like a fancy graphics card or good monitor will do for visuals. Ears are too valuable a thing to waste.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
For example, on my PC I use a digitial 5.1 headset and then a USB headset when i want to use vent or something. The benefit of using a seperate USB headset, particularly for voice, is that your system (at least win 7) looks at that headset as a different device than your onboard/card audio so you can assign different audio to different outputs easier. I have it set up so when voice comes in through vent or steam, it comes in only through my USB headset speakers, my headset has a mic, and my game/movie/whatever audio will still come through my speakers. This works really well for me and I would recommend it. If I had a 3.5 headset, I don't know of any way to set up a system like this unless the software handling the sound is specifically set up to allow you to assign specific devices within the software without using windows settings (vent allows this, but steam doesn't do it correctly, so I needed a better option). It's just a bit more freeing.
Either way, whatever you use for audio be it onboard or card, should still do all the leg work for your audio regardless of where its being sent.
EDIT: The only potential drawback to using a USB headset is that supposedly if you're using a lot of active USB devices at the same time it can dick up your audio. How many you have to have running and what they're doing is up for debate, I've personally never ran into an issue with typical USB use (i.e. mouse/keyboard, headset, Zune and phone hooked up, but not actively transferring typically). I suppose if you were doing something like a backup to a USB device you might run into issues; but it seems like a non-issue enough to not let it sway you.
I guess, also, if it matters, your 3.5 headset can be used in pretty much any device anywhere. You're not gonna hook up a USB headset to your MP3 player or something. So if that matters, then I guess take it into consideration. But then what headset you're using for music....see my above post on my views there.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Because I didn't spend that much, I'll barely (if ever) use the thing and I'm deaf in one ear anyway. Audio all sounds the same to me.
But thanks all, I'll grab the two prong thingies.
You misquoted, I wasn't the one who said that. But if you're half deaf and everything sounds the same anyhow, then why do you care which type of headset is better?
Ah well.
In the $10-$20 range, though, it still won't matter much.
There, happy now?
We have a person who habitually lets go of his button before he finishes talking and blames us for not hearing the last 2 words of his sentence.
Or he's on voice activated (which on 360 will be the case), and his current headset is picking him up low enough that it cuts out for parts of his speech. Usually this just means moving the mic closer to your mouth. Though I know on the stock headset, you can be chewing on the fucking thing and still have problems.