I’m what you would call old school. Although I’m well versed in tech and gaming and been in the industry now for close to a decade. There’s things I don’t do or at least didn’t do. It wasn’t until recently that I decided to really give streaming and podcasting a shot.
New media is the wave whether I like it or not. More and more of us that wish to be impactful in this business are going to have to at some point get in front of a mic or camera and depending on your medium, both. This is why I’m approaching this review in the sense of the novice or soon to be streamer that just needs a really good mic that won’t kill your wallet.
FEATURES AND DESIGN
Hyper X’s Quadcast S design hasn’t changed much from it’s predecessor but this isn’t at all a bad thing. The design is clean, modern and very functional. When you put it on your desk it has a good posture. Standing at 10 inches tall the Quadcast S isn’t overwhelming because of it’s thin profile. It’s also very light weighing in at just 254g just for the mic itself which puts it at about half of a pound and with the stand it weighs in at 610g which is just about 1.3 pounds. The shock mount doesn’t at all take away from the look and it’s super helpful in making sure that the mic won’t wobble and give you any choppy sound especially if you get a little excited while playing your favorite games, in fact, if you wanted to connect this mic to an arm, now you don’t have to buy a shock mount, not unless you just want something completely different. So a thank you is what I have for Hyper X in that regard. Now onto using the Quadcast S.
Once you connect it, the mic lights right up real bright and immediately you feel like you’re ready to record. Before you do so however, you’d want to check how you want to be heard and how loud you want to hear it when you’re recording. The large volume knob on the underside of the mic makes it very easy to nail your volume. The Quadcast S has buttons and knobs perfectly on the mic that allow to make changes easily even during mid-stream without anyone knowing.
The Quadcast S also hasn’t changed much in terms of it’s sound profile from it’s predecessor but this isn’t a bad thing because this mic still sounds great. You get your standard directional patterns that being Cardioid, Omnidirectional, bi-directional, and Stereo and Quadcast S maintains it’s same frequency response of 20Hz-20kHz and bit-rate of 16-bit. There is a built in pop filter as well so if you have a prominent voice like myself or you tend to over pronounce your “p’s” then your stream won’t be penalized with loud pops. The Quadcast S does a very good job of this but we still recommend getting a pop filter to further enhance this.
NGENUITY SOFTWARE
Of course when you have a mic like this with all of the bells and whistles and RGB there’s bound to be some software. Typically, dealing with a software suite for a product can be kind of a pain in the ass because it’s either got too much going on or just too little. With the Ngenuity software, it does just enough. It works best when you have multiple products from Hyper X but if not then it’s just the basics here. You have the ability to do everything you can do on the mic itself except manage the RGB within the software. That’s Ngenuity. Simple.
WHY BUY THE HYPER X QUADCAST S?
The Hyper X Quadcast S is a novice’s dream mic as I see it. Are there better mics, sure, that depends on who you ask but if you want a mic that you can just connect and go that doesn’t make you feel like you’ll need an audio degree to use then this is the mic you want. The Ngenuity software thankfully isn’t complex to use and rightfully so since the Quadcast S is simple and it helps add to your overall aesthetic when you’re recording so those who are looking at you on stream can see all those cool colors on your mic.
Cost wise I wouldn’t say it’s cheap but I wouldn’t call it expensive either considering all that you get when you buy this mic. Retailing at $159 it sits right in the mid range in terms of price point for a novice or intermediate streamer/podcaster that isn’t necessarily doing it professionally. For the money, this mic is hard to say no to. If uou wanna get one of these dope mics and improve your streaming and podcast game exponentially. You can get one HERE
