3 Things To Look For In A Headset Microphone

Headsets come in all shapes and sizes, and not all of them sound great. Some give you sound quality that’s incredible, while others leave you disappointed and wanting something better.

And when you’re shopping for new headsets, how do you really know if the headset you like will sound good, or if it will end up being one that doesn’t give you that professional sound quality you’re looking for? It’s hard to know for sure, but there is a way, and I’ll let you know about it in this blog.

There are three things a headset needs to have if you want to sound your best, and give your callers a great listening experience.

A microphone that provides great voice audio quality.
A microphone that does a good job at removing unwanted background noise.
And finally, a microphone that not only removes noise well, but when doing so, it’s able to maintain the quality of your voice at the same time.

You absolutely want a headset that has a solid sounding microphone because if it does, you’ll sound crisp and clear to your callers. The last thing you want is for your callers to struggle to hear you, and having them asking you to repeat yourself. Things like that only detract from your call, and keeps your callers mentally occupied with their struggles to hear you, and when that happens, your call isn’t nearly as productive as it could be.

Background noise suppression is really important.

You might be someone who works from home, from an office, or even in your vehicle or coffee shop. Wherever you work, and whatever kinds of noise you have to deal with, having a good quality noise reducing microphone will help to keep those distracting noises off your call.

Some headset microphones do a great job at removing background noise, such as the Engage 50 II, or the Yealink WH62, or Tilde Pro for example. But not all microphones can remove a lot of noise which means when you use those models, your callers are pretty much going to be hearing all that noise going on in your background. And that’s not good. Why? Because it’s distracting. And like I said a moment ago, if your callers are distracted by bad sound quality, or noise, for example, they’re not 100% focused on your conversation. And if there’s an objective to your call, these things work against it.

So assuming you have a headset that sounds great, and removes background noise very well, can that same headset keep you sounding great when there’s noise going on around you? Believe it or not, a lot of headsets can’t.

What happens is the microphone works to eliminate that background noise, but in the process, the voice quality suffers. And when that happens, your callers won’t hear a lot of the noise, but you’ll sound garbled, choppy and not as good as you did when there wasn’t noise going on.

So how do you know if a headset has a microphone that can provide these things?

You could try talking to people to get their experience. That could work, but you have to consider that everyone’s situation is different, so their experience might not be yours.
You could read some reviews. That might work, but it might not. That’s because reviews aren’t always 100% accurate due to the well-known practice of review manipulation. Sometimes reviewers are compensated for their review, and some companies filter out bad reviews, and only display those that are complementary.
Maybe it would be best to just buy a headset, and if it doesn’t meet your needs, return it. Sure, you could do that though you’d have to go through the return, and refund process which might not be easy,

depending on the vendor’s processes, and how easy they are to work with.

So what can you do to find a headset that gives you the kind of sound quality that you need? Here’s my suggestion;

Have your vendor send you a headset to try before making any decision to buy it or not.. When you do this, you have nothing invested except for your time. But, a little time invested on the front end, sure beats headset issues on the backend. And if your vendor won’t let you try out a headset, it might be time for you to find a new vendor.

Bottom line

When you’re on important business calls, you want to sound your best, and you don’t want your callers being distracted by bad sound quality, and the sounds going on around you. And when you use a headset that claims to have a noise canceling microphone, keep in mind that just because it says it’s noise canceling, that doesn’t mean it is, or at the very least, that it does a good job..

And when that noise canceling microphone is doing its best job at removing noise, you want it to also keep you sounding good at the same time. Not all headsets can do that, so try out the headset in your specific workplace before making that final decision to buy it. This way, you'll know exactly what to expect, and you’ll avoid unwanted surprises.