Hello this is the Provoked Prawn and this is a video to compare the HyperX Quadcast
with the Roccat Torch now in this video I'm going to be showing you the Quadcast S
and talk about the differences between that and the Roccat Torch but the original Quadcast is also
the same in terms of the audio capture it just has some minor differences in terms of RGB I'll link
to a video I did comparing the s and the Quadcast in the description in this video though I'm going
to be talking to you about the differences between the two microphones and obviously doing a mic test
at the end I'm using one of the microphones right now so see if you can guess in the comments before
you get to the end which microphone I'm using currently but here I want to talk about the
differences between these two mics what they like to use and the features and more now you can see
them side by side here and you'll see that the Roccat Torch sits quite a bit lower on the desk
than the HyperX Quadcast now it's worth noting that both these microphones support boom arms
and I'll show you that later on as well and they both sound better when you get them on a boom arm
they both have RGB lighting which is useful in different ways as well so more on that in a
minute and they are both very nice microphones with excellent capture quality and a number of
really interesting features that make them stand apart but also worth considering because of them
you'll notice that the Quadcast has that wonderful shock mounting system on it which is a really nice
highlight of it and the Torch has its own features that include multiple selections
for different polar patterns and you can see that the Quadcast also has four polar patterns as well
that has stereo omnidirectional cardioid and bi-directional but the Torch has a whisper mode
which I'll show you what that means later on that makes it particularly interesting
now you can take both of these microphones off their stands to make them boom arm mountable and
it's really easy to do but you can see it's slightly different the Torch just comes off
the base and they'll just screw into your boom arm whereas the Quadcast knees removing from its stand
and it's also very important that you're careful not to lose the parts that come with the Quadcast
in the process of doing that you'll notice as well that both of them use a USB-C connection so they
have USB-C cables plugged into them and they both have 3.5 mm jacks as well so you can see already
quite a few comparable features in terms of what they offer now the Quadcast S is a solid favorite
with many people as was the original Quadcast and that's because it has a wonderful capture quality
but it's also very feature rich you can see that you have the easy polar pattern
selector on the back and that makes it very straightforward but also has a number of other
really interesting highlights to it the Torch though shouldn't be dismissed because it too
has a number of interesting options on it you can see multiple things including RGB light adjustment
you have a gain slider various different polar patterns on it as well that includes cardioid
stereo and whisper mode and they both offer up to 20 000 Hertz frequency response though it's worth
noting that the Torch has 24 bit 48 kilohertz sample bit rate as well whereas the Quadcast goes
up to 16 bit 48 kilohertz sample rate and bitrate so slight differences in the specs and I'll leave
all the specs in the description now I look at the RGB lighting I said already that both off
RGB lighting but for different reasons and on the Roccat Torch it's interesting because the
color of the RGB which you can see down the edges and on the Roccat logo changes
depending on what polar pattern you're on so if you switch between the different modes
you'll see a different color for each which means that you can see at a glance what mode you're on
you'll also notice that when you adjust the gain up and down it changes where the light is on the
microphone so you can see at a glance what sort of gain levels you're on easily and know how high
the microphone is capturing which is pretty cool also shines on both sides of the microphone which
means that if you're streaming and you have it on a boom arm then your audience will be
able to see that which is pretty nifty so it has a number of interesting highlights in the RGB there
also this microphone has an interesting design in terms of its mic mute capabilities so there's a
little sensor on top which you essentially wave your hand over the top of and then it will mute
it and the light will change to red to let you know that that has happened you'll also
notice that there's an indicator on the bottom at the front of the base which changes between
live and red mute when it's muted so you can see there's a little indicator down there another
highlight to let you know when it's muted and the thing of interest here is that you can also adjust
the brightness of the RGB lighting and turn it off completely so you have multiple ways to know
what's going on you can see that brightness button at the back of the base station along with other
connections and another thing of interest here is there are three cables to connect the Roccat Torch
up one single small one that goes from the base station to the microphone and another one that
goes directly to your computer but there's also a third cable included which will allow you to
connect the microphone from a boom arm so a longer one that goes between the mic and the base station
so you still need that base station connected somewhere on your desk and that's handy because
you then have easy access to it now the HyperX Quadcast by comparison has two RGB lighting zones
and what happens here is it's lit up as standard and then when you tap the top of the microphone
which has a capacitive mute functionality the RGB turns off so that's how you know when it's muted
now the Quadcast S is really nice microphone for a number of reasons one of which is the included
shock mount it's very rare to get a shock mount included as standard with your mic that's really
excellent to have this high quality shock mount system built into it this means that it's really
easy to remove knocks and things like that and you'll have seen that it will come off of the
stand as well so you can keep it on there as you attach it to a boom on you can see these close-up
shots of it showing just the high quality nature of the microphone setup and that shock mounting
system it's really clever and it's nice looking I actually preferred the one on the original
which had the red cables instead of these gray ones but this is still a nice looking bit of kit
and really well thought out and that's one thing that's great about the Quadcast is the number of
excellent sensible and useful features that have included it has a shock mount it has a built-in
pop filter as well and it has a number of other highlights obviously the RGB lighting is not only
a nice touch to show off to your audience but it's also a visible use case for when it's muted and
not again this has a USB-C connection that plugs into the rear and a 3.5 mm jack that you can plug
your headphones in for mic monitoring and audio pass through the Torch obviously doesn't have the
same shock mount system that the Quadcast does but that doesn't mean it should be dismissed because
it is also interestingly designed for other reasons obviously having all the controls in the
base station makes it particularly useful when you mount it on a boom arm because it means everything
you need to access is not on the microphone so if you need to adjust anything in terms of the gain
or muting or polar patterns or anything else that you're on you're not actually touching the mic
and therefore you're not passing through sound by accidentally bumping into it
and other things which is actually very cleverly thought out you have multiple controls over there
and obviously USB-C connection again you can adjust the brightness of the lighting and you can
tweak all sorts of other things including the gain polar patterns and other things so I think that's
an interesting design here the fact that it's also easily boomer mountable makes both of them really
nice now the HyperX Quadcast has a very soft touch gain wheel on the bottom so you just turn this
to adjust the volume up and down how loud you are and how much sound is capturing I'm doing a video
separately on how to optimize the sound of this microphone how to get the best quality out of it
but basically what you need to do is turn the game down as much as possible and get it close to your
mouth and that will then reduce the sound but the thing about it is it's a very nice silent slider
so if you do find that you need to tweak it you can do that without the sound passing through and
the capacitive mute function is obviously the same you though if you want to change polar patterns
obviously that's still going to knock through but you're unlikely to want to do that I'm using
cardioid pickup pattern at the moment which is basically talking to the front of the microphone
that's how it picks up your voice but you have the option to select between different polar patterns
if you want to capture all around however if you're trying to block out a lot of background
noise then that's the polar pattern to go for but it means it can be used for multiple things so if
you're podcasting with multiple people in the room for example are doing an interview then you might
want to capture from different directions so it's very flexible built-in pop filter and other things
are an interesting highlight when you get really close and just look at the detail and the quality
of this microphone it belies the price I think it looks like a much more premium microphone you
might think that the RGB perhaps takes away from the effect obviously that is a personal preference
whether you're gonna like this or not but I think it really looks the part it looks fantastic and
adds a really nice quality to it that's unmistakable and are really easy to
identify obviously side by side the two look very different and they're both very easy to spy you
can obviously see the big difference between them however they're both wonderful microphones both
offer superb capture for a USB mic both have a wonderful setup of features and other things
now I've already said how easy it is to boom our mount these the Torch is particularly easy because
it basically comes away from the base station and then can easily be installed it has a threading
system that will easily install on a variety of boom arms you can see Elgato's wave arm here
which I've done a video on separately but I'm also using it on the Rode PSA-1 plus that I'll show you
and usually have an adapter included in the box with those sorts of boom arms that you can thread
this onto now both mics are really easy to get onto a boom arm but the Torch is much much easier
because it just basically unscrews from the base and then screws onto the boom arm with relative
ease whereas the Quadcast requires a bit more convincing in order to come off but once you've
got it off that stand then you can pop it onto the boom on now you do need an adapter for doing this
and it's also important to note when you're taking it off the stand that there are various bits that
come off you can see them popping off in my hands so you have the rings you have a clip on the other
side and you obviously have the screw system that holds that in place be very careful not to lose
any of those things because if you ever need to put it back on the stand then it's going to be a
problem and I've had a lot of people in previous videos comment about losing and then asking where
they can get them you get an adapter included in the box that you can see me attaching here which
basically takes the place of the center sand and you put the whole thing back together using the
same screw system and mounting thread that it came with when it was on the stand and then you
just screw that into the adapter that adapter then allows you to install it on a boom arms
the setup there is really straightforward here I'm using it on the Blue Compass
once again I've obviously also used it on the PSA1 plus now I've heard from some people that the Blue
Compass can't handle the Quadcast those people are wrong so if you hear that don't listen to them you
can do it quite easily the Blue Compass does need some adjusting there's a tensioning screw in the
bottom of the base and also some on each of the points of the arm as well this is one of the best
boom arms that I've used and are still using it now highly recommended and it's perfectly
suitable for this microphone as well so now I'm going to go into the mic tests and show you the
difference between the quality of these two mics so if you guessed that I was using the Quadcast
for the voiceover for the beginning of this video you were correct because here I am now with it
and this is how it has been the whole time on the Rode PSA-1 plus and I've been doing the voiceover
for that but in a minute I'll show you what the Torch is like now this is set with the cardioid
pickup pattern as I said so I'm talking into the front of it which is essentially here where
the HyperX logo is and I also have it adjusted probably down to quite a minimum amount of gain
so it isn't picking up too much background noise but one thing I have noted and you might have
heard is there are some clicks from my mouse and also a little bit of external noise I could tweak
it a little bit more on as I said I'm going to do a video to show you separately on that as well but
you can hear that it does pick up certain things so if I've got my scuff control here for example
it does pick up some of that noise but what I want to demonstrate is if I put this behind
you can't hear that nearly as much as you could when I was in front
so obviously the sound changes depending on where you're talking into it so if I'm around the back
here you can't really hear it obviously that is going to vary depending on the pickup pattern
because if you switch between the pickup patterns you'll notice quite a difference in the soundscape
so there's various different ones so you can see this mode for example you can talk in it from
different angles and the sound then moves around depending on where you're talking into it and
then obviously you also have a variety of other modes so if we switch all the way across here
now I can talk from basically any direction and this one is the omnidirectional
there's quite a lot of different sounds there but obviously there's noticeable
sounds when you're changing polar patterns which isn't ideal
but the good thing is as you can see there you can't hear when I mute it
as long as you're gentle and don't thump it you can just do a gentle tap on there and easily
be muted without any fuss so a very nice microphone wonderful capture quality and
just for quick demonstration purposes I'm just going to do a bit of typing on the keyboard
obviously the keyboard is slightly over here so it's not quite in the same place and
let's see it's barely picking up now I can turn the gain down a bit more
turn it all the way down now obviously you can't hear me as well
but you also can't hear as much of the typing there
are other things that you can do to adjust that
but finding the sweet spot for your environment your room surrounding noise and other things
obviously a personal sort of tweaking that you have to do to the microphone once you've got it
but still fantastic capture quality and now onto the Roccat Torch
so here I am with the Roccat Torch on the boom arm and you'll see it has like a green
effect on it at the moment that's the cardioid pickup pattern and you'll also notice as I said
earlier that this adjusts depending on how much gain you've got applied to it
turn it up and down you can see that changing one of the good things about this is
visually easy to see when it's muted but also what mode you're on so it's really easy to see that you
can hear the sound quality of it as well it does a great job it can up sound but also eliminating
some of the background noise and again it's the same sort of tweaking logic that you have to do
where you have to mess around with again to get it right one thing I don't like about this microphone
is although it has a 3.5 mm jack on it you can't mic monitor through it for some reason so I've
got this 3.5 mm headset connected up to the base station but I'm not hearing the audio through the
microphone so there's no mic monitoring which is very odd bit strange thing to do so I can't hear
myself right now which is a real problem if using a closed back headset this is not an issue with
the Quadcast so it's worth bearing in mind what I do like though is that there are other modes
so if I switch into this mode for example you can hear the sound changes depending
on when you're talking into it so this is actually a stereo mode or essentially
it changes direction it's really interesting what is interesting is this also a whisper mode
so this is an extra mode on the microphone that's designed to like have ASMR style so you can talk a
bit quieter this is like a pickup pattern designed specifically for ASMR which is pretty unusual I
think it does a really good job of capturing that sort of sound I'm not really into ASMR personally
but if you are and this might be an option for you and again you can see that the car has changed so
apparently whisper is blue a nice soothing blue but for me it would usually be the cardioid
pickup pattern and the sound from that now I do think that the Torch offers a really good capture
I'll leave it up to you to decide which of these is better I'm going to type in the background now
as I'm talking so you can see what you can hear from but if you check out the review
I also show the difference between the sound pickup when it's on the desk versus on the boom
arm as well as some ways to improve the sound so I'll link to that video in the description
be sure to check out the Quadcast and Quadcast S versus video and other information in the
description as well and if you've got this far in the video thanks for watching I really appreciate
you smash that subscribe button hit the like button and come back for more in future this
has been the Provoked Prawn hope you found this video useful interesting hilarious or otherwise
take a look at these other videos I think you might find interesting as well and have a look
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