On the PCMech Live show I am asked at least once each broadcast what I use for a headset and why it sounds so good.
The answer is simple: It’s a USB-based headset with microphone. Specifically, the Logitech ClearChat Comfort USB (wired, not wireless). The cost for one of these at the time of this writing is between $25 to $35 depending on where you shop.
Why does a USB microphone sound so much better compared to plugging one into the MIC port of a sound card?
It’s the difference between analog and digital.
The MIC input even on brand new sound cards is a very old technology. It’s an analog signal going into a digital environment. When using it, be it for recording or chatting with Skype, Ventrilo, TeamSpeak or otherwise, white noise (i.e. hiss) happens and "muds" the sound.
USB on the other hand is digital-to-digital and much "cleaner" sounding overall.
The Logitech headset I use is not fancy; it’s as basic as you can get. All it has is the headset/mic itself and volume/mute controls on the wire. Nothing else.
When you plug one in, there are no special drivers needed (not for the Logitech anyway), and no audio settings you have to tweak other than input volume.
There is one thing to consider however. A USB microphone is treated a completely separate device from your sound card, because it is. So you cannot use your sound card volume controls to adjust a USB-based microphone’s input volume. But don’t worry because a new setting will be available in the Windows sound manager to adjust the input setting.
In addition, programs you use that access the microphone will also show it as a selectable device, so setup is easy.
Final tip: Make sure to plug in your USB headset before using the program that needs to use it. For Windows XP in particular this must be done. If you plug in the headset after the program is launched, the USB mic won’t be available as an option until you restart said program.
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There is no difference, and if there is, it is certainly not caused by the USB interface, but rather the mic quality itself.
“Digital to digital” does not exist as all audio recording goes from an analogue to digital conversion, in a chip known as an ADC (analogue-digital-converter). The only difference, is where this takes place. In the unit, or in your soundcard. Put simply, all sound is analogue in it’s nature and must be ‘sampled’ into a digital version.
Now, a cheap soundcard (particularly in laptops) is going to sound pants, whereas a proper soundcard is going to sound good. The “white noise” is actually quantitization error for the most part, and digital interference in the minor (filtering digital noise from electrical equiptment is fairly easy, if it were hard highly sensitive units, say your CPU, wouldn’t function). Moving the ADC external does little to counter this, as digital noise is generally caused by how “clean” the electrical signal is, something that USB power suffers in equal measure to motherboard power.
What makes the difference? Well generally the ADC in external mics is better than the ADC in internal soundcards – recording is actually a seldom used function. Swap this for a decent soundcard and you will reverse the trend. Also, USB mics are filtered to only respond in the vocal range, cutting out most of the white noise. Try to pick up some music with a high dynamic range through a USB mic and the unit usually responds poorly.
Finally, there are many situations where taking an analogue signal is very beneficial, especially if you are looking to gain the signal.
As ever, generalizations of what is best are not recommended and the best one depends on application. If you are looking just to record voice / Skype on an average laptop then USB might be the best – for predictable quality and digitisation you can control, analogue.
nope, digital has a lot to do with it…
Er Phil your impressing and hopefully fooling no one with your fancy talk, Digital/USB makes a MASSIVE difference. Maybe you should have kept your receipt instead of living in denial lol.
No, he’s right. All microphones are analog. In a USB microphone, the digital conversion happens in hardware enclosed in the same casing as the microphone. With an analog microphone, the conversion happens in your soundcard.
Good analog mic + good soundcard = good sound
Good USB mic = good sound
It’s obvious to any one with a reasoning brain that Phil & David are talking a lot of sense. Thanks Phil for such a detailed explanation – it answered a lot of questions that I had.