Headset with good microphone
I wanted to get a headset with a good microphone. I don't care too much about the speakers - as long as they sound reasonably balanced, I am happy. I first tried the Speedlink Medusa NX Gaming Headset (30 Euro at my local electronics store). The speaker quality was good, but the microphone was awfully noisy. Using the front MIC input of my PC, it sounded like this (Please ignore the nonsense text, I was getting familiar with the Audiorecorder App of Windows 8, which is another story entirely):
Note: This player doesn't seem to work on Firefox right now. I hope this is fixed in future Firefox/Wordpress releases.
I read somewhere that the back input can be less noisier, because the back input is closer to the ADC (the thing that digitizes the signal). This means there is no long cable going through the (noisy) PC intererior, where it picks up noise. The back input did sound better, but still not good.
So I went back to the store and upgraded to the Speedlink Medusa NX 7.1 Surround Headset USB. It's connected via USB, because it has its own soundcard. Because the DAC and ADC are outside of the PC case, and because they can be optimized for the speaker/microphone, this allows a better quality. Drawback: You can't plug it into you iPad and other portable devices.
The audio quality was indeed a lot better:
There is still a high frequency hissing sound present, but this can easily be removed using Audacity.
It's no studio quality, but I'm happy! The main drawback of this headset is that the speakers are a bit too loud.