greetings Earthlings and gamers today I'm back with a review of a brand new microphone from
HyperX so today we're looking at this guy the HyperX quad cast which is a USB multi pattern
condenser microphone if you do want to pick this microphone up it will set you back around 140
dollars like always I'll throw some links down below also for the majority of this review I
will have the microphone connected directly to my Mac with the input gain on my computer set at 75%
and the gain on the microphone set to the first dot I won't do any kind of post-processing but
I may boost it in post so check the doobly-doo to see what I did he did now let's talk about
what comes in the box that was a sleeve first off you will get the microphone it comes with
the shock mount that is pre-installed it also comes with a desktop stand already installed if
you want to remove the desktop stand it does come with a mount to put this on a proper microphone
stand you get a USB cable and some documentation then as far as the build quality it doesn't feel
amazing or even that good but it feels fine it does have an all-metal body but the metal feels
incredibly light and a little bit cheap the shock mount is attached with these screws so
it would be a pain to remove it the bottom of the microphone is where you'll find the gain control
to adjust the microphones recording level the top of the microphone has a big mute button and
it becomes apparent when the microphone is muted because the red LED inside turns off for example
then when the light comes back on you know your microphone is hot again and finally on the back of
the microphone you will find a USB port to connect this to your computer as well as a 3.5 millimeter
headphone jack which does offer a latency free monitoring but there's no way to turn it off or
even adjust the level that you're monitoring the microphone then as far as the specs this
thing has a stereo omnidirectional cardioid and bi-directional polar pattern it has a frequency
response of 20 Hertz to 20 kilohertz a sensitivity of around negative 36 decibels a bit depth of 16
bit and a sample rate of 48 kilohertz okay prior to this moment I have been using the cardioid
polar pattern on the microphone but now let's cycle through all the polar patterns to see how
they sound now I am speaking into the stereo polar pattern and as I move around the microphone you
should hear me moving from your left to your right hand speaker or vice-versa but regardless this is
how it sounds now I'm on the omnidirectional polar pattern and the frequency response and
sound should remain consistent as I move all the way around the microphone as an omnidirectional
microphone does now I'm back on the cardioid polar pattern and this is how it sounds and just a quick
note for the majority of gamers and streamers this is the polar pattern you should be using
you should avoid the stereo the omnidirectional and the bi-directional like they're the plague
especially if you are just a solo streamer and finally I am on the bi-directional polar pattern
which picks up audio in the front and in the back and it has some pretty dead areas on the side so
if you were interviewing somebody at a table and they were sitting across from you this is the
polar pattern you would want still on the cardioid polar pattern banging on a keyboard with cherry
MX blues to see how much of my voice force how much of the keyboard it picks up now I've put the
microphone back on the provided desktop stand and I will place it directly in front of me maybe a
foot and a half away from my mouth first I will go ahead and bump my desk to show you how well this
does air rejecting that kind of noise but then I will go ahead and type on my keyboard with chair
Baloo's again to show you why you wouldn't want to do this because just picks up too much keyboard
noise if you're typing now I'm right on top of the quad cast on the cardioid polar pattern to
demonstrate the proximity effect of this thing about one foot away from the microphone two feet
away from the microphone now I am back on the cardioid polar pattern and let's go ahead and
test the plosives so please bring Pizza pronto please bring Pizza pronto please bring Pizza
pronto hmm now you can see my sound preferences opened up in Logic Pro and this microphone only
records at 48 kilohertz so with that sample rate and an i/o buffer size of 128 samples
we have a resulting round-trip latency of 12 and 1/2 milliseconds or 5 milliseconds output if we
drop it down to 64 we have 9 and 1/2 milliseconds round-trip or 3 and 1/2 milliseconds output and
if we jump up to 256 samples 18 milliseconds round-trip or 8 milliseconds output ok now I
have the gain on my computer set to 75% and I will decrease the gain on the microphone to 0
and slowly increase it so you can hear what kind of noise this microphones preamp generates 0%
first dot second dot third dot fourth dot v dot
and 100%
now I have the gain on the HyperX quad caste set to v dot so probably
around 75% I will now go ahead and adjust the gain
on my computer to see if we can get a better noise floor out of this mic 25%
fifty percent
75%
and 100% okay now I have the HyperX quad caste connected directly to a Windows 10 PC still on
the cardioid polar pattern the computer's input gain is set at 73% and the input gain
on the microphone is still set to the very first dot and this is how the audio sounds
can they do it again there's only one way to tell my friend we will test out the mic and we will
tell Cheryl to get a life seriously you don't shoot guns at people's apartments you stupid
[ __ ] knock it off okay for the outro I will have the microphone sat on my desk directly in front of
me and I will start by saying what a shocker another gaming company has made a microphone
completely ripping off the blue Yeti but first up in terms of pros I really like the fact that
there's a physical game dial on the microphone that's always something that I'm looking for I
also like the big mute button on this thing and the LED light to indicate when you're muted or
when you're hot and I also think it did a pretty decent job at rejecting background noise and then
in terms of cons the microphone was pretty dang bad at rejecting plosives there's also
no way to shut off the zero latency monitoring or adjust the zero latency monitoring level but also
when you have the microphone on the actual stand adapter I found that the ports were very poorly
placed there's just not enough room between the microphone and the adapter to keep the cables
from getting crunched or have some unnecessary pressure on them which makes me worry about the
longevity of those ports but now what are my overall thoughts for music I don't think the
performance on any of the polar patterns justifies the price so if you are looking at this microphone
for music I would suggest you look somewhere else I just don't think this is cut out for
that application and then for spoken word the way that I would describe this is unoffensive nothing
really popped out and bothered me in terms of the frequency response it's just there I will say
though it does seem to lack a little bit of body in the low end and may come across as a little bit
thin if you're farther away from the microphone and finally would I recommend this microphone kind
of I guess it's fine I'm just so sick and tired of these companies releasing gaming streaming
microphones that have four polar patterns why are you doing this it makes zero sense for 99 percent
of streamers the only polar pattern they're going to need in a microphone is cardioid so I think the
majority of streamers should look for a microphone that is just cardioid and it does cardioid very
well rather than a microphone that has four polar patterns three of which you will not use that are
just men but if you are someone who's searching for a somewhat decent looking microphone with four
polar patterns that you probably won't use then sure I guess I would recommend it because it's
perfectly middle-of-the-road it's unoffensive and I think you'll be perfectly happy with it
but before all you gamers and streamers decide to pick this microphone up let me just pose a
question to you do you really need for polar patterns are you really gonna use them or is
that just a neat selling point that makes you want this microphone if you aren't going to be using
are fall are artful all for polar patterns maybe you should look into something that is a cardioid
dynamic microphone or a cardioid condenser microphone that does that one polar pattern
a lot better than this mic alright guys well that is going to do it for today so if you found this
video fun interesting or helpful go ahead and give me a thumbs up if you hated it give me a
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beneath me and don't forget to hit that Bell icon if you want to hang on the discord server
and have some chats about microphones audio gear or anything I will throw a link in the
description and I will see you all next time thanks for watching thanks for listening bye