Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

What is your gaming headset? (SC2 compatibility a plus!)

M

macnewguy

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 1, 2010
13
0
I'm a little disappointed that I had to return a Creative Tactic 3D Sigma headset which I received not 2 days ago from Amazon. It seemed to completely distort my voice when on Skype with my team partner in StarCraft 2.

I had previously just been using a pair of traditional music headphones along with the built-in mic on my iMac.

So anyway, with that said: What are you using that DOES WORK! I would prefer something without the need for software (i.e. the Creative Control Panel needed to be on in the background), and I'm almost afraid of USB headsets at this point in favor of a straight analog 3.5mm plug set up.

Ultimately I don't care what it is as long as it's SIMPLE and works great with the few games I have to enjoy on my Mac (namely, well, all things Blizzard). I don't need a lot of bells and whistles - just headphones and a good mic.

Please share.
 
I used to use a Logitech G330 and that worked perfectly; absolutely nothing had to be installed. I ended up wanting a nicer set of headphones though so now I use a pair of Audio Technica ATH-M50S headphones with a Blue Snowflake sitting on my desk.
 
Logitech G330 here. It was cheap and rests on the ears instead of pushing them into my head! So they're comfortable, too.

Not sure if a non-USB would be an option for a Mac. I know the MB/MBP have line-ins not microphone ports. Although the G330 uses standard analog plugs, but comes with an adapter to convert to USB.
 
Sennheiser PC360 is the go-to choice for high-end requirements. Its not cheap; but its unrivaled when audio quality is concerned for communication intensive usages.
 
Used to have some nice Senn 595's, now I upgraded and use the Senn 650's w/ a cheap icemat mike
 
I have the SteelSeries Siberia V2, had them for 1.5 year and it's very good.
It can be bought with a USB sound card that works out of the box in OSX, no extra drivers needed. (you don't get surround sound in OSX tho)

You get best of both world,both minijack and usb.

Pic:
productpage_big_siberiav2usb.png
 
Thanks for all the tips.

I'm leaning towards Sennheiser at this point - but I'm still a little fuzzy on the issue with whether or not I need to also purchase an iMic (or Syba USB adapter) to go along with any of the 3.5mm style headsets.

I've got a mid-2010 iMac with inputs for both headphones and mic on the back. My research tells me the mic input is not powered, and thus, would give me no juice to run the mic portion of any of these gaming headsets. Thereby it would require the USB adapter to get power through the USB port, rather than the power-less mic port.

Or does my 2010 iMac avoid this issue? I seem to read most of the older posts about this problem and they involve MacBook Pro models.

Hopefully I can dodge this requirement...(crosses fingers)

My goal is to hang tight until Black Friday/Cyber Monday and look for a deal on a headset from Newegg or Amazon and get the iMic (if needed) at the same time.

***Just checked the SteelSeries website and I'm excited that their Diablo 3 headset is officially supported in OS X with drivers/software...little pricey at 119.99 though***
 
Last edited:
All macs, does as far as i know, need a powered mic, since the input is a line in/optical in hand not a mic in (which would be powered).
 
Last question: Any issues with "robot voice", distortions after x amount of time, or anything like that?

I saw that referred to as a problem with OSX and USB headsets. There's quite a few threads in the apple support community on this topic.

Just curious if anyone here has experienced this with SteelSeries or Sennheiser + iMic, GameCom 777, etc.
 
macnewguy said:
Last question: Any issues with "robot voice", distortions after x amount of time, or anything like that?

I saw that referred to as a problem with OSX and USB headsets. There's quite a few threads in the apple support community on this topic.

Just curious if anyone here has experienced this with SteelSeries or Sennheiser + iMic, GameCom 777, etc.
Click to expand...

It had 3 different USB sets and it happened on all, including the steel series card.
What I did was to replace the USB driver with an older one.
This was on 10.6, dunno how it is on 10.7.

I haven't used the sound card for awhile, since I got another audio card.
(I'm doing recordings and use the same card for my headphones.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back