Hello, this is The Provoked Prawn, and this is a video to compare the HyperX Quadcast S with the
original HyperX Quadcast. And I want to compare the features and facets of this microphone as well
as to talk about the capture quality of both. Fantastic microphones that I used after using
Blue Yeti mics for quite a long while, and I was impressed with the features of the original
Quadcast, and now I'm going to show off the Quadcast S with its RGB lighting. What you will
note is there's a difference between the design of these but both of them have similar features. They
also have exactly the same specifications, which I'll leave more info on the description below. But
essentially, the S adds RGB lighting where the original had a red light on the inside of it.
So it's lit up when it's in use and dark when it's muted, so you know when it's muted,
and when it isn't. tTe Quadcast S allows you to adjust the RGB lighting in the NGenuity software,
which I'll show you later on and I covered in the review/unboxing. But both these mics have a number
of nice features that make them interesting, which includes this built in anti-vibration
shock mount that's built into the base, a pop filter that's built inside of it as well,
a really quiet game control wield in the bottom, taps a mute microphone functionality at the top,
and an overall nice look and feel. They're also capable of capturing good quality audio. I'm
using the Quadcast S to record the voiceover for this video, and it's capturing at 48 kilohertz
16 bits sample rate. It's capable of 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz frequency response and it has 3
14mm condensers with electric condenser microphone setup, and the specs are the same for the Quadcast
and the Quadcast S in that term, so if you're wondering which is better at capturing audio,
they're both the same. The difference is the aesthetics, the look and feel of it. The original
Quadcast had these red shock mount cables that connect the shock mount to the microphone and
that red pop filter look and feel to it. So it really stood out and it was quite striking, and
really nice as well. I was really struck by the overall features, you don't usually see a stand
with a shock mount built into it and pop filter as well. And it's a really nice attention to detail
and close up looks at it just show it off, it looks really nice. For some reason with the
Quadcast S they've dropped the red theme and now the cables are this sort of off-white shade, and
I don't think it looks quite as nice. It's not as striking as if you're not a fan of red then it's
not a problem. It's a bit more understated. Oddly, when it's turned off, the microphone doesn't have
any RGB lighting around the pop filter. And so you just have these white cables whereas before
you had red cables and the red pop filter so it really stood out on a desk and it was obvious
what it was and it looked fantastic. It still is pretty obvious because these HyperX mics stand out
from the crowd. They're quite nice looking, very unusual with this really honeycomb design around
them, really nice inner design, and good sound quality capture as well. They are expensive.
The Quadcast S is particularly expensive. They're both difficult to get hold of at the moment. With
it being 2020, stock levels are a nightmare. But as you can imagine they'll probably be
easier to get in the future and they are worth the money. They do capture really good audio quality
and deliver a really good sound, and they're very nice in that way. They will work with PC, PS4 and
Mac, and they use slightly different connections which I'll talked to you about in a minute. As
you can see the Quadcast S is fairly understated without being plugged in now. But both of them
come with a three meter USB cable. In the case of the Quadcast S it's a USB-C connection to USB-A,
and you can see a very nice braided USB cable, long and capable of running down
a boom arm and into a PC and giving you a good bit of length to it. The same for the Quadcast,
so you get a decent size cable on both, but just one is USB-C and the other ones mini-USB,
so slightly different between those two. There's a minor point but there is one thing of note is that
the Quadcast S uses more power, it has more power consumption because of the RGB lighting within it,
whereas the original Quadcast has less because it only basically turned red and that was it. You can
see the difference between them as close ups here though, the mini-USB on the original Quadcast.
Both of them have a 3.5mm jack that you can plug into so you can do some mic monitoring,
so you can hear the mic as you're talking to it and as you're using it so that you can get an
idea of the quality and levels as well and adjust that. But as I said it has a soft touch volume
gain adjustment wheel on the bottom, which allows you to turn the mic up and down if you're not
quite loud enough so you can quickly and easily do that. The bonus of this is what I liked on the
original Quadcast and they've retained it here, is that it's incredibly quiet. If you roll it,
it's not heard on your mic, and you won't pick it up on Stream, for example. So it's easy to
adjust that on the fly without having to go into the settings within an app or something like
that to mess around with that, so it makes it really simple. And it's the same for both mics.
Good solid feature and a really easy simple design to that as well. Now both of them also
have multiple polar patterns. You have stereo, omnidirectional, cardioid, and bi directional,
you can switch between those using the dial on the rear, the setup is exactly the same, cardioid is
for what you're doing - what I'm doing now, doing a voiceover talking straight into the microphone.
But you can also set out for stereo or bi directional, omnidirectional for you Quadcasting,
interviews, whatever else you have people in multiple positions in the room. Now another thing,
another highlight to it is the touch to mute functionality that I showed earlier on with
the original Quadcast, you can see here with a Quadcast S basically a very light tap on top,
there's no buttons, there's no button to press and make a noise on the microphone. So you won't
hear a discernible click, if you mute it, you can just tap it gently, and it will mute and the light
is on when it's in use and then off when it's muted. And it's the same for both microphones,
it's really easy to see at a glance whether it's on or not, which is nice, certainly very striking,
not something you'd see on other mics really usually it'll only be a tiny indicator
[inaudible]. The difference here is obviously a lot more lighting. With the Quadcast as you
get RGB lighting that's split into two zones, top and bottom. And with the NGenuity software,
which I went into more depth and review, if you're interested in seeing, that you can
basically cycle between different colors on those zones, so you can set solid colors, or you can set
going through waves of different colors and have different colors showing up there and showing
through it, it's really nice, it's good to be able to customize it. One downside is that you
can see hotspots at the top and bottom where the RGB lighting is which slows it down in my mind.
Both microphones come with an adapter in the box that allows you to take it off the stand,
while still retaining the shock mount and attach it to a boom arm. This is a standard attachment
that will work with any standard boom arm. It has two different thread types in it that allow you to
screw it into that with ease, and I'll put all the details on that in the specifications below
as well as links to the boom arm that I used and to everything you need to know about the mic. But
basically, this allows you to get it off the desk, which I'd highly recommend doing, to be honest,
and putting it on a boom arm and getting it as close to you as possible. Doing that helps you
to eliminate a lot more background noise and pull it close to you can reduce the gains so
it's not picking up as much of the surrounding environment. And it reduces the sound that you
don't want being picked up and just focuses on your voice or on what you're trying to capture,
so it's much better in that way. You see that it still maintains that shock mount. So it's not an
additional purchase, which is the nice benefit of both these microphones that you don't need to
go out and buy and have a shock mount. Normally with a microphone, you'd have to take it off its
stand and then you have to get a shock mount and a pop filter and a boom arm and it is extra and
additional costs which you don't really want on top of - especially on top of an expensive mic
to begin with anyway in the first place. But the process is really easy to take it off the stand,
you basically unscrew and then screw this adapter in. Once you've done that, then you can then
attach it to a relevant boom arm. In my case I'm using the blue compass. I've been using this for a
long time. It's a nice solid robust boom arm with a standard thread, so it's really easy to attach
any microphone to it and you can see there's a little ring dial hear that you can basically
screw down and tighten it up so making sure you're getting the microphone into the right position to
get perfect audio capture. It also has channeling for the cable so you can run it down the bac. You
can do the same with both these mics as you can see here. The original Quadcast, when I was using,
that I had it on the same boom arm back when it released which was like a long time ago now. And
both of them look magnificent this way. Obviously, if you're streaming, the RGB lighting stands out a
bit more than the standard red one on the original Quadcast. But beyond that there is very little
difference in terms of what it does. It captures the same quality of the audio, it has the same
features, just has a slight different look and feel to it. Hope you found this video useful.
Thanks for watching. This has been The Provoked Prawn, thanks for taking the time to watch this
video. Hope you found it useful, interesting, hilarious, or all of the above. Be sure to
check out the description for other information you might find interesting, and subscribe and
watch these other videos as well that I think might be useful to you, and have a great life.