I made the mistake of believing some dumb guide online that recommended the Razer BlackShark v2 Pro for Linux. Literally the volume control is broken out of the box lol.
I just want a wireless headset. For listening to audio. And a mic. Don’t care for fancy features. Apparently too much to ask for a linux user.
What are y’all using and how is it working for you?
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If you need a good wireless headset that can do audio and microphone at the same time, you’re forced to get a WiFi (2.4Ghz) dongle enabled headset, or get an aftermarket dongle. Bluetooth cannot support high quality audio and microphone use at the same time due to the intrinsic limitations of Bluetooth (which may change in the future)
yeah plus I hate the UX of bluetooth, the pairing and auto-connecting to other devices is annoying
When I dual booted Kubuntu, my DAC and standalone mic were detected and worked in CS2.
Discrete / seperate wired hardware. Not wireless. Sorry.
Bookmark worthy thread. Really good info here.
For real. I was hoping for like a handful of responses, and I got a plethora hahah
So, I have 4 kids, and they’re not very considerate with my tech. They don’t actively throw or destroy anything, but they do frequently drop stuff.
It’s no audiophile’s wet dream, but they’re not bad for $25. The audio lag is minimal, sound quality is better than expected, and they’re pretty light and comfortable for long gaming sessions.
Corsair Virtuoso XT ! Best microphone on a wireless headset I’ve ever heard !
Remember to use JamesDSP and make a profile with the proper AutoEQ data no matter which headset you buy ! Makes it sound instantly much better and less muddled. I can’t live without it x)
Ohh I’ve been using Easy Effects for a quick bass boost but James DSP looks much more advanced!
I’ve also been on the search for the perfect headset. I have 3 requirements :
- I want two independent output devices to show up natively without software, 1 for main output and 1 for voice chat output
- I want on the fly mixing between the 2 outputs, preferably without additonal software, with a physical knob
- I want good sidetone, preferably with volume knob
Checking all these boxes has been near impossible. I currently have an older steel series arctis and it does it. Newer models tho and almost every OEM out there has some shit software that’s windows only. Newer steel series for instance only has the chat mix as a virtual output in software. I know I can achieve similar with Pipewire. The only headset I found that was close was the audeze gaming headset but the sidetone was awful, static and crackle.
If someone has a rec that can check all those boxes for me let me know.
I have a Logitech G533 headset that I’ve owned for close to ten years now and I’ve never had any issues with it in Linux. The USB dongle just plugs in and it works.
I Have a hyperx cloud flight (the first ones), very light, in arch based distros the range is pretty big (in mint and pop, for whatever reason, the range is abysmal), they work with no caveats on linux (though no battery report, there’s a script or two floating on the internet to have it with no hassle). I’m sure there are better options these days (better battery and sound quality), but these are the ones I have experience with.
They’re not my first choice in audio, but they did so much for me when I had my kid, you can drop in and out of your pc without needing to remove your headphones, they don’t block much so you can even listen to the baby crying if you’re at a low volume (or you can just have one ear out), you can hang out in calls while holding the bb, etc.
For any new parents out there, can’t tell you how much they did for me, in particular the combination of
- being for PC (no latency, being able to get in and out of your gaming sessions or whatever you do without even having to take them off)
- having a decent quality microphone next to your mouth (you don’t need to raise your voice and can be heard easily despite background noise, good signal to noise ratio)
- not being that good at blocking sound, this is crucial when you can’t compromise your full attention but can have most of it.
- being light weight (I know there are some wireless headphones that are bulky and not that light).
I use a shitty broken Razer barracuda x, and some Sony when I want music
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why wireless?
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what budget?
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music?
3a) what genres are your favorites?
3b) what genres you don’t listen to?
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how old are you
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environment?
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what games are your favorites in the past?
6a) what games are your favorites now?
6b) what games are you looking forwards to?
Do you mind if I hijack, asking for a friend
- Wired please
- 200 USD max
- Oh yeah 3.1 thrash metal, reggae, electro, rap, 60s 3.2 classic, pop, rock
- 42 !
- Home, but quite noisy near the road
- Apex Legend, cyberpunk 2077, baldurs gate, civilisation… 6.1 Gloomheaven, door kickers 6.2 Stray, Deadlock
Are you just looking for headphones, or do you need a mic on it, too? Because you get get away with a pair of sony mdr-7506’s and a modmic for that. I generally think a boom arm and a real mic is better than 2-in-1 headsets in a lot of cases, but I also recognize the utility that committing to a microphone attached brings to the table. Those headphones are 80-90 bucks msrp, but everything’s been going up in price so ymmv. And if you attach a modmic to them, your options, value, and repairability open way up. Those headphones are great all rounders and punch way above their weight, don’t require an amp to get 90% of the oomph from them, but still have options later down the line if you so choose. And they’re closed back.
IF you want open back, buy a pair of massdrop 6xx for 200$. Those have even higher value:price ratio. But those generally do require an amp to open up. Not a great amp, but an extra 200$ to step into a schiit stack would be minimum imo. I’ve bought too many little dac+amp combos and I just don’t like them; the initial value is by far higher, but there’s no upgrade path, they’re usually shitty and don’t have the wattage to drive authoritatively, and are aimed at basically kids and are questionably robust at best. Keep in mind, this option is both more expensive and doesn’t net you a mic - but, it is a proper path if you want great quality stuff that you won’t buy and soon after consider regretting. The sony mdr 7506 is great, but it is a cheap pair of headphones.
Friendly neighbor headphones that you might want to take a look at are the audio technica m40x. I don’t like beyerdynamic because they have pretty high distortion. Counter strike players like them because they’re bright as shit to hear footsteps, but I got that you like listening to music more and play rpgs; Deadlock is still too much of a wildcard at this point.
Also, Stray was really good but relatively short with basically no replayability.
Thanks for the detailed answer ! I think close back would be better to block the surrounding noise. I’ll take a look at your suggestions, and I understand the need of an extra amp, but that might be over budget. Thanks again for your answer, it helps me choose
I own several pairs of much nicer headphones and have used many different headphones and amps for all kinds of different purposes and genres and sources of music and audio and stuff. I daily drive those sony’s (with software eq) directly out from my interface headphone monitor out, and it’s more than fine. I really like the audeze tech and what they output, but for whatever reason, these relatively cheaper 7506’s just… They hit that midground for me where I have zero guilt using them and leaving them out and all that, and also like the sound signature. Nothing about them is perfect and nothing about them is deeply flawed. Honestly, the closest things I can come up with to be serious flaws are that their earcups aren’t very big or deep, and that they have about an inch of (tiny) very exposed wires on either side that run from the band to the actual earcup, but somehow they never seem to fail.
I use SoundID Reference (software eq program in Windows) to eq them, but you can easily use an oratory1990 eq preset https://www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/ on whatever eq might be available on Linux. EQ isn’t perfect and doesn’t really solve problems, but it can make appreciable and remarkable differences.
Actually, and this question is to anybody who might know: is there a good Equalizer APO equivalent (with a good gui) on Linux?
May I further ask what’s your take on in ear monitors ?
The main advantage to me is that they wouldn’t compress my glasses against my skull so much. I currently have Razer Nari (no, not on the head please !) and they compress my glasses so much that my skull is kind of curved in now at these points.
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Sennheiser HD 280 pro
Main difference beetween that and most other monitoring stuff is the plastic build, but it.only costs like 80€ vs 120-150€, and it has lower impedance if you don’t want a separate audio setup for it or want to buy it later
This is by far the best headset you can get for that amount of money. Easily repaired, great sound quality, sturdy build. Love this model. I have had mine for almost a decade now.
I love my Steelseries Arctis 7. It doesn’t need any software to configure at all, works out of the box in Linux. Has a nice hardware mixer right on the headphone so you can lower game sounds to hear voice chat better and vice versa.
Is it corded? I think I have a 3, and got the one with 3.5mm plug. Never had an issue.
I have the same, an old arctis 7, and it’s plug-and-play on Linux mint. It’s wireless with a USB-c dongle, but 3.5mm jack is an option.
Once upon a time, I was worried I had to buy another headphones, but I used an aux cord to plug it into a headphone-amp for my electric guitar, and it just works. It turns on & off automatically with the aux cord. I suspect it has to be charged to still work, but I haven’t tested that.
I had an old Arctis 7 that finally fell apart last month after 8 years of heavy use.
I got a new Arctis 7. It is complete garbage. Cheap materials, smaller to the point that it just doesn’t fit my head, my ears don’t fit in the cups.
And instead of having it register two devices for chat and game you get a single device and then have to use their software to mix the chat, which is a nonstarter for me on Linux. SteelSeries has enshittified hard.
This was my experience exactly. Luckily my old arctis still works I’m just terrified of the day when it doesn’t
Wireless with a USB dongle. Analog will never have issues, but this fancy wireless one doesn’t either :)
How does this dial work which lowers game volume so you can hear voices?
The headset presents 2 separate audio devices to your computer, so you direct your games to use the headset game output and Discord or whatever to use headset voice. It’s pretty magical honestly, no tabbing out when you can’t hear a dude.
My Sony XM3 headset works really well
If you like music, you might want to check your selected model(s) on the AutoEQ site for how close they are to the ideal response. I’ve had some headphones that had way too loud high frequences.
Anything from Sennheiser or Audio-Technica should be great, but their Bluetooth stuff is pricey.
I hope you aren’t playing any competitive games because wireless introduces extra latency and makes you play worse
Naw, and all the competitive games I’ve played in the past, trust me audio was not the bottleneck for my skill lol
Are there dedicated desktop wireless headsets with noticeable latency? My shitty hyperx cloud flight have no noticeable latency and I even played around with some audio settings (on linux, windows audio drivers are very limited) and got it to the point where I could use them to monitor my usb mic in real time (which, for anyone who knows, is a very latency sensitive use case).
Afaik the latency thing is a problem with bluetooth.
