In the game streaming scene, headsets are often looked down upon.
“Gaming headsets,” specifically focus on having decent audio and a usable microphone
in a cheap package - but a higher-quality result can be achieved with a better pair
of headphones and a standalone microphone.
This is ideal if you’re broadcasting from a static location with minimal relocation
or gear movement.
At least, quality-wise.
There’s the issue of a giant microphone blocking most of the speaker’s face, however.
But in the professional broadcasting field - when you need to cover live events and have
a mobile and clutter-free setup, headsets are a huge boon to such a setup.
They rely on professional headsets such as this one - the Audio Technica BPHS1 - to provide
high-quality microphone audio and still let talent hear themselves, while rejecting background
noise and not taking up table space.
It was actually at such an event - local sports broadcast - that I first used and tested the
BPHS1 (or a similar model, at least) in person, back in 2013 or so.
Despite what complaints you may hear in this video, that experience was positive enough
that I still decided to pick up a BPHS1 for myself - at a whopping two hundred dollars
- four years later.
Does this professional headset fill my need of having a Vox-level quality microphone experience
without having my large RE20 blocking my face?
Let’s take a look, right after this.
Tubebuddy is the best tool you can get to manage your YouTube channel.
You can Update videos in bulk, optimize your SEO, syndicate to social media, back up your
metadata and MORE all with a simple browser extension.
Head to eposvox.com/tubebuddy to learn more and download it for free.
I’m EposVox here to make tech easier and more fun today tackling the Audio Technica
BPHS1 broadcast headset.
And yes, as I mentioned before, it costs two hundred dollars.
What do you get for such a steep price?
You get the headset itself, with attached and reversible microphone, a secure but detachable
cable that ends in a XLR and 1/4" TRS jack with a very long length, and three foam windscreens
for the mic capsule - which you don’t want to lose.
The headphones themselves are about as unremarkable as it gets, but they’re very durable.
There’s minimal padding on the headband, but the adjustment band is metal.
The can housing is made of a hard plastic that can take a beating.
I have dropped mine and kicked it around a large number of times since March and you’d
never really know.
And I know the ones I worked with for local broadcasts were always taking a beating.
The microphone arm is the most easily-positionable of any headset I have ever used - I’m really
not sure how gaming headset companies get this so wrong all the time.
Better yet, it can spin all the way around to go on the left or right side of the talent’s
face.
While yes, this is a stereo headset, the intended use of a broadcast environment where everyone’s
headphones are hooked up to headphone splitters and fed mostly mono tracks anyway, left-right
channel balance is not important.
In many cases, the user will only have one ear covered anyway so they can still hear
the realtime sound around them.
Otherwise, the closed-back cans seal out a lot of outside sound.
The microphone capsule is HUGE.
This is a great vocal mic, designed specifically for background noise rejection and picking
up clear and crisp vocals.
It’s a big dynamic microphone with a cardioid pickup pattern.
And again, you want those windscreens on to prevent breathing noise.
The audio cable attaches with a little thumbscrew to keep it locked and secured into the headset,
which is nice.
The cable is long and carries both the XLR microphone output to run to any mixer or interface
with no need for phantom power, and the 1/4" headphone signal.
The main complaint here, is you can only pull the headphone jack and XLR jack so far apart
- and even on my little audio rack this means having the cable pulled tight to reach both
the headphone output on my mixer and the XLR input on my pre-amp a few Us lower.
Before we get to microphone quality, let’s talk about my complaints with this headset
a bit more.
The included ear pads are awful for long-term use.
They’re super thin pleather that does the job of sitting somewhat comfortably on ears
and being easy to clean sweat and grease off - but just aren’t comfortable if you’re
sitting at home streaming all day.
I’ve replaced them with some super thick velour ear pads from BrainWavz.
These are like tiny little pillows and help keep the drivers off my ears and add a lot
more comfort - but they also pick up a lot more dust and hair and would get very gross
if you’re passing them around between multiple people.
As I mentioned before, the head band itself also has very minimal padding.
The headphones themselves also have pretty “meh” sound to them.
Again, they’re not made to be studio reference monitors or anything like that - but it is
worth considering.
You can hear everything clearly and fine, but there’s no wide sound stage, the boring
kind of “flat” sound profile, and a little weak feeling compared to my higher-end headphones.
Again - fine for its intended purpose but were disappointing for my kind of streaming.
Let’s take a look at the mic next.
[mic test, raw] The mic actually sounds really, really good.
During my live streams with this headset, viewers were surprised as to how high-quality
a headset mic can sound.
While they could clearly tell the difference side-by-side between this mic and my usual
RE20 setup, just using it on its own they were equally as happy with the result, and
to a degree, as am I. Using the headset gives me more freedom to move around while I stream
and not worry about vocal pickups and don’t have half of my webcam blocked off.
It’s definitely a headset microphone, but compared to a cheap gaming headset, it’s
a lot better.
[vs Soundblaster X H7] For comparison, here’s a comparison to the
Creative SoundblasterX H7 gaming headset.
[back to BPHS1]
What you’ve been listening to has been the raw microphone running straight through a
pre-amp and into my mixer with no processing applied.
Let’s switch things up.
[mic test, dbx] In the same headset purchase, I also picked
up a DBX 286s 1U audio processing box to add to my rack.
This one little box, basically does all of the processing steps that the rest of my rack
does - pre-amps, adds a compressor and noise gate, a de-esser, and a sort of equalizer.
This small box can bring out a LOT better sound from this headset microphone, as you’re
hearing now.
These settings are actually tuned for my ElectroVoice RE20 microphone, which is what I’ve moved
to using the 286s for, so it might not sound perfect with this headset - but this is just
to show that microphones like these sound great as-is, but play VERY nicely with processing
hardware.
[end mic test]
Again, a smaller headset mic will never beat out a bigger, better built microphone.
Only so much can be done in that package.
But it’s still a pretty kickass microphone.
So would you pick up this headset for your personal broadcasts or event broadcasts?
I think for $200, it’s a pretty good sell for an upgrade on normal headset quality - but
depending on your use case, the crappy headphones could be a problem.
But if you just used it for streaming, I think it could be okay.
YouTubers like SeaNanners have actually moved to this kind of setup for their streaming
workflows in recent years, as well - which was neat to see.
If you have a bigger budget, I’d recommend checking out Sennheiser’s broadcast line
of headsets.
They start at 500 dollars - more than double the price - but seem to provide MUCH better
headphones and quite a bit better microphones, depending on your situation.
Worth giving a shot, but out of my budget to try myself anytime soon.
I hope you enjoyed this review.
I tried to do what I could to bridge both the intended mobile broadcast market of this
product with my more game-stream-oriented audience and cover all sides.
If you liked it, smash the like button, get subscribed for more awesome tech videos - and
I’ll see you in the next one.