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ivraatiems
12
Oct 5, 2017
I'd like to chime in with those complaining of various quality issues with the Minimic. I received mine a couple weeks ago, and here is my experience so far:
The good: The mic itself has excellent sound quality when it's working; on par with friends' Modmics and a huge upgrade over my cheapo desktop mic or a webcam mic. With no audio enhancements on (see below), the mic captures my voice no matter where I put it, and doesn't pick up other sounds, music, etc. coming out of my open-backed headphones. The mic and stalk are flexible and fit nicely around my headphones (AKG K712s) without weighing them down too much. The included cable is very long.
The bad: The quality of every part other than the mic itself is abysmal. After about two weeks, the sticky velcro neither velcros nor sticks. I had to replace it with a cut-out square 3M command strip in order to keep the mic attached to my headphones. The cable is also of immensely low quality; the plastic face of the slider for volume control fell off within the first 10 minutes of use, and cannot be reattached (I can still adjust the volume, but I have to carefully move the pick under the slider manually). While the cable itself still works, I anticipate that it too will fail soon enough.
The ugly: The drivers for the mic have an awful noise-cancellation "enhancement" on by default that causes the mic to never activate for more than a split second, even when it is right in front of my mouth and I am shouting into it. If one didn't know where to go to turn off this option (recording devices -> the mic -> enhancements), one would be forgiven for assuming the mic itself was totally defective. While so far, the mic itself seems to be well-made, after seeing the other complaints on here I figure it's a 50/50 chance that it, too, fails in the next month or so, and then all the money and time is wasted.
Was this worth the price plus the (quite long) wait? Absolutely not. I should have paid the extra ~$20 for a Modmic; I would have had it in two days from Amazon, and it probably wouldn't be falling apart.
Overall, I'd rate the mic itself (assuming it continues to work, which is not a given) a 4/5, and everything else that came with it 1/5. Overall, a 2.5/5. I don't think this was worth the time and money invested, and if the mic itself fails, I will be demanding a refund.
gnarcia
31
Oct 7, 2017
ivraatiems"The ugly: The drivers for the mic have an awful noise-cancellation "enhancement" on by default that causes the mic to never activate for more than a split second, even when it is right in front of my mouth and I am shouting into it. If one didn't know where to go to turn off this option (recording devices -> the mic -> enhancements), one would be forgiven for assuming the mic itself was totally defective. While so far, the mic itself seems to be well-made, after seeing the other complaints on here I figure it's a 50/50 chance that it, too, fails in the next month or so, and then all the money and time is wasted. "
Huh? This mic has no "drivers" or software. It's an analog audio input device. This doesn't make sense...
ivraatiems
12
Oct 7, 2017
gnarciaIt could be that it's something my motherboard's sound card is trying to do with the device - which is still odd, 'cause it doesn't do it with other microphones so far as I know. Here's a screenshot of what I see:
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The motherboard is an MSI XPower Titanium Edition (MS-7968).