If you have a passion for video games and want to work with video games, then a game development or game design job position used to be in your future. You could then work with a game publisher and eventually help in publishing a brand-new game title.
Nobody out there is going to pay you to play video games all day, right? Surprisingly, a new and growing job market is to become a professional gamer. Thanks to the Amazon-owned Twitch.tv streaming website, gamers can now create a free account and begin sharing their live gameplay for thousands to watch.
After perseverance, advertising, and promotions, the dream of playing video games for a living can become reality. There’s more than just games on Twitch as you can stream anything you desire. If you’re an artist and want to stream yourself painting a painting, then you can grow a large audience that way. The same goes for if you are a cook, car restorer, lumberjack, poker player, and so on.
The best part about all of this is it leads to becoming a full-time streamer where you make money based on user subscriptions, channel advertisements, and user donations.
As amazing as it sounds to wake up every morning and play video games (or paint things), it’s not as easy as it looks. As with any presenter, there is an audience you need to entertain; become dreary and they’ll find somebody else, keep things exciting and people will stick around.
You don’t have to be a good gamer or a professional one to get started on Twitch. In fact, many of their streamers are just everyday people who want to share their gameplay with the world. These people are better entertainers than they are gamers. What you do need is the right equipment. The prebuilt PC underneath your desk isn’t going to cut it here.
To begin, you need a powerful PC since it will not only need to play the game at maximum settings but also be actively uploading and transcoding the gameplay to Twitch for people to view live. Of course, watching gameplay isn’t as enjoyable as it is to interact with the streamer, so a high-quality webcam, so the audience can see you, is a plus.
The key word in that paragraph on getting started on Twitch is “interact”. Since everything on Twitch is live and real-time, it’s quite enjoyable to interact with the streamer themselves as well as the chat. Watching the streamer and seeing the streamer is one thing, interacting with them is a whole different experience.
An inexpensive microphone isn’t going to cut it here and a microphone attached to a headset can be bumped causing loud audio scratches on the viewer’s ears. For streaming, a microphone that is stand-alone represents your voice realistically, and just works is what you need to get started.
Welcome to my review of the Turtle Beach Stream Mic. Throughout this review, I will be discussing the following topics: the design, functionality, and my final thoughts. A special thank you to Turtle Beach for providing me with this product.
Design
When compared to other popular desktop stand-alone microphones, the Turtle Beach Stream Mic is smaller in size. In the box, there is the microphone itself, a metal U-bracket that attaches to the microphone, and a heavy metal base that connects to the bracket.
The included base has some significant weight to it to ensure that the microphone stays stable on the desk. To prevent the microphone from sliding, there are four rubber pads on the bottom of the base that do a great job at holding the unit still. With the microphone attached, it does take up some room on the desk, but, again, not as much as other desktop microphones.
I ended up using the included base for about a week, but in the end, wasn’t a fan of it. It was well built and held the unit still, but when hitting the mute button on the microphone would cause the base to tilt backwards and then forward again. This was a side effect of the four rubber pads on the bottom.
Since the base is removable and Turtle Beach includes an extra mounting bracket, I opted to use this microphone with a microphone boom arm. Attached to my desk, the microphone floats above my desk and gives me the ability to swing the microphone in while in use and out when it’s not game time. More on this later.
For the design of the microphone, it’s a rectangular shape masked mostly in black with gray appearing on the U bracket and voice grill. The design is similar to the old-style wrestling microphone that hung from the ceiling.
Almost all of the body is plastic, for the front section which has a glossy finish, something I dislike about this design. The glossy finish attracts fingerprints and reflects lights that are behind me. Although the lights did not glare and the fingerprints were easily wiped away, I would have preferred a matte finish or even a gamer-like design.
In terms of I/O, the microphone features a large mute button on the front with the rear containing the 3.5mm headphone jack, volume wheel, a slider to change between PC, Xbox, and PS4, and then the mini-USB power and data jack.
For a little bit of customization, the mute button is lined with a color-changing ring. When the microphone is active, you can have the ring display green, purple, orange, or blue with red reserved for when the microphone is muted.
Finally, there is a USB cable included with the Stream Mic. It’s rubberized finish and fair length should be good for most, but I did need to use a USB extension cable. Additionally, the unit is fully plug-and-play; there’s no need for software or drivers, it just works.
Functionality
As mentioned, I opted to use the Stream Mic on a microphone arm stand. With the Stream Mic attached to the arm, it gives the feel as if you are hosting a radio talk show. The Neewer arm only cost me $16.99 and it was one of the best accessories that I found for this microphone, so much so that I wish it was included with the Stream Mic. Note: If you do purchase this stand, these 5/8-Inch Male to 3/8-Inch Female screws are needed for the Turtle Beach mount.
Now that I feel like a radio talk show host, it was time to choose which device I wanted to use the Stream Mic with. Being that the microphone is advertised to be certified for Twitch, it would seem fitting to use the microphone with a PC. However, the Stream Mic also supports Xbox One and PS4 through the USB port on the console.
When it comes to reviewing the microphone, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Using a microphone, you typically have little experience with it as the listener is the one hearing you. Throughout the years, I have gone through a lot of different microphones and finding one that doesn’t make you sound like you’re using a microphone is difficult. What I mean by that last sentence is that when you use a microphone, it’s always best to sound as real as possible. You do not want to be muffled or scratchy, but rather loud and clear. People constantly saying “What?” when you talk means that the communication is lost causing a missed call out in the game, or worse, if people on your stream cannot hear you then they get frustrated and stop following you.
For testing purposes, I followed a few different methods. One, I listened to myself using the Windows Recording app within Windows 10. Second, I had a friend play on my PC while I listened to them on theirs. This way I could hear how the microphone sounded. Third, I enabled the “radio” feature on my sound card that allowed me to hear myself as I spoke. Lastly, I asked friends for feedback.
The Stream Mic was put up against some hefty competition. There was the Beyerdynamic MMX 300 headset, the Kingston Cloud II headset, and the Blue Yeti microphone.
To add even more variety, the Stream Mic was used on multiple different gaming communication platforms. Battle.Net, Curse, Discord, and TeamSpeak were all used for different testing.
When in use, the Stream Mic provides a crystal-clear representation of your voice to the receiver. When battling the other microphones, it was impressive to see how clear the Stream Mic really is. You can hear every word as if you were talking to the listener directly. Your voice is almost transparent to the listener and sounds as if you are not using a microphone at all.
One thing I did notice was that the microphone was slightly quieter than I would prefer. Of course, positioning the microphone much closer to your mouth increases the volume significantly, but even at a distance of 6 inches away, it was quieter then the headsets I compared it with.
The large mute button on the microphone is a great feature, as you can tap it and guarantee a successful mute of the microphone. Unfortunately, the tapping of the microphone does include a loud audio spike for a brief moment before the microphone can successful be muted. The audio spike is just a thud sound from you hitting the button. It’s not the end of the world and I didn’t have anybody complain about it, but it’s something to note.
Turtle Beach use their TruSpeak technology within this microphone. By incorporating a studio-grade digital processor, the microphone will automatically adjust your voice and EQ levels to the perfect levels. It’s as if you have your own personal autotuner to make you sound your best.
For the most part, I used headphones with the Stream Mic as using speakers would mean my listeners would be able to hear what I hear. For the fun of it, I did some self-recording on the Stream Mic to see how well it handled background noise, like music. For the most part, it does a great job. It focuses in on my voice while talking and keeps the music from the speakers quite low; still audible to the listener, but barely.
When typing on my mechanical keyboard, the Stream Mic does pick up the noise. During gaming, it isn’t awful as I was only tapping a few keys at a time. If I swapped to typing a paragraph, out of respect, I would end up muting the microphone so the listener wouldn’t hear the clatter. This wasn’t a problem with a headset microphone.
Over the testing period with this microphone, nobody needed to say “What?” to me or questioned what I said. The Stream Mic is quite impressive and I was happy to use it among all of my gaming platforms and chat programs. Compared to the competition, I can only say that it impressed me as a standalone microphone. What I enjoyed most about the Stream Mic was that I was free to use whatever headset I wanted, even if it didn’t have a microphone on it. For the future, I don’t see myself needing a headset ever again as the Stream Mic on the microphone arm is really all I’ll need.
Some of you may want a direct answer on how well this microphone stacks up against the king of desktop microphones, the Blue Yeti. The Blue Yeti is known as the king because of its incredible build quality and sound. The Stream Mic does a great job against the Yeti, it really does. It doesn’t take the crown, but it’s a close second.
My Final Thoughts
Priced at $79.99 (Amazon) Turtle Beach’s Stream Mic is a solid microphone that gets the job done and just works. The plug-and-play ability, multiple platform support, and great sounding audio make this a great option for practically any gamer. While it could be used for voiceovers and interviews, I found that it’s really focused towards gamers and podcasts. When stacked against the competition, it held its own and performed like a true champion. My voice remained clear, subtle, and perfect thanks to the internal digital processor. Something that I would highly recommend is getting a microphone arm as it really completes this package.
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