Gaming mic (without headset)

I have been looking forever and hope that someone here has a solution. My goal is to find a standalone microphone that I can wear without an earphone headset. I like hearing my home theater surround system while playing versus putting on a pair of earphones, but it is hard to find a mic that isn't obligated to have a full earphone assembly attached. I've used cheap earphone assemblies before and just dangled the earphones around my neck, but that is not optimal. I have looked all over websites trying to find something not attached to earphones, but they all seem to be proprietary to wireless systems for PAs. Because I am wanting a mic to use while I have my home theater system blaring, I have been looking for unidirectional on-body mics or shotgun desktop mics. I play games on my couch a bit away from the speakers.

Does anyone have a good solution? I'm not bothering paying more than $50, which to get a earphone+mic solution is easy, but hard to find something that is just the mic.

What are you playing on? PC, PS4, or Xbox? Or all three? If PC and PS4, you can use any USB headset. I use my Yeti with my PS4 and PC. The Yeti might be outside the price range you mentioned, so I’d just look at other USB mics like the Blue Snowball. It’s one of the best in the price range at around $60.

You might want to do some research on that mic first though to make sure it won’t pick up your background noise.

The Modmic 5 is pretty good at just picking up your voice and reducing background noise, which is key if you are going to have your home theater blaring, as you say. It's standalone and can be rigged up to pretty much anything, so you have a lot of options. Obviously people generally attach it to their headphones, but you could hook it up to a hairband or something. Hell, might as go all in and just attach the anchor directly to your jawline.

Zalman ZM mic1

best cheap mic you can buy

Wouldn't that potentially cause a lot of feed back for anybody you chat with?

Getting this to work without the tv picking up seems borderline impossible. Good luck duder!

I just did a shit ton of research into this a couple weeks ago.

My goal was to find a headphone + mic setup. A little different from your situation, but still applicable.

I ended up going the sennhesier HD 598 + modmic 5 route.

You'll want to go with the Zalman ZM mic1 (which is what PistolPackinPoet linked ya) or a modmic.

The newer modmic 5 has a switch that changes it between omni and uni directional, but is expensive. You can get a modmic 4 for significantly less, but youll have to choose between omni or uni cause it doesn't come with a switch. The problem with these though is that they are designed to attach to a headset.

The Zalman I think is what you're looking for. If you get a "desk" mic such as the blue yeti or snowball, it's gonna pick that surround sound up like crazy.

If you're purely looking for a microphone with good sound isolation and background rejection, I recommend looking into lavalier microphones.

They are solely dedicated to picking up your voice and clipping to clothes so they can be around your mouth, without the need to dangling things around your neck. A lot of lav mics use a 3.5mm audio jack, so they're plug and play with console controllers and PCs.

Yeah this is my initial thought too. I've played online with people who don't use headphones and it's maddening, so I hope the OP's friends have more patience than me! Especially as I imagine a surround sound system is going to be 10x harder to cut out than just TV speakers, due to the sound coming from all directions and probably being louder.

I use 598's with a Blue Yeti on a boom arm with a shockmount and it's a fantastic combo. Out of the OP's price range but I just wanted to say good choice!

I would say though that since the OP is trying to use surround sound at the same time rather than headphones I think even a unidirectional mic isn't going to cut it in terms of isolation though.

I was thinking this as well, as it's what the Giant Bomb guys use on set. I know they pipe game audio into the room via speakers and their lapel mics don't seem to pick up much room noise at all. You can also get a lapel mic to try out for like £10-15 which is worth it even if it doesn't work.

There are all sorts of mics available for PC usage without headphones. But I'd say you have an impossible task. Lavalier mics don't allhave good sound isolation - you can hear (for example) the air-con going during Giant Bomb's Unprofessional Fridays.

You could try a good stage mic (like a Shure SM 57 or 58), since they are unidirectional and do have fairly good isolation for stage useage with high background spls. Having said that, around 80% of sound in a room is reflected, so directionality is not always as effective as you may think. The backgrounds will still bleed through to others listening in, only it will not be noticable to you in the room, without monitoring.

Any mic that will do what you want would have to be so close to your mouth (and/or directional) that the sound will change every time you move you head. Additionally, you would probably have to have the volume on your surround system so low that you wouldn't feel the benefit and your multiplayer playmates would still feel the pain.

I've been using the bundled Xbox One Chat Headset when playing games on the PC through my home theater setup for years now. When attached to an Xbox One controller it works really easily, has mute and volume control options and sounds pretty good both ways. The headset is light and as someone with a pretty big head I don't really notice it on me even during longer sessions. Having the headset rest on one ear does not really effect me hearing things from that side of my speaker setup. And it has the benefit of me being able to distinctly hear my friends through this separate channel which I can volume adjust independently from anything loud that's coming through my speakers.

If you don't own any Xbox One hardware, then this along with a Bluetooth compatible Xbox One controller would be roughly a 50 dollar/euro investment. If you do most of your gaming on the PS4 and Switch, then this is probably not the best choice but it's been a good one for me.