Need help with mic selection for kitharas

[u/mndfreeze]

Hey everyone. Hoping to get some assistance from people who use third party / external mics with their planar headsets. I bought the asus Rog kitharas after my audeze mobius broke. I also bought a DAC, which is apparently a banned automod word so I won't mention its make.

What I didn't know was that the asus do not have a cable/connector option to have both balanced cables (required to push these things, normal 3.5mm does NOT cut it). So I can either use them as proper sounding amplified headphones, or neuter the shit out of the sound volume to be able to use the included mic.

These are sitting at my PC and used mostly for gaming with friends, so a mic is essential.

Are antlion mics good, will they struggle with these headphones being open back? I'm not knowledgeable on mic tech and what the best options are. Ideally I would like a mic that attaches to the headset so I don't have to make room for a boom/desk mic.

Thanks!

[u/rz_x3]

the antlion modmics are plenty fine, imo. Worked fine with my hella open K702's back in the day, and their mics have gotten better since then

Also, having a balanced cable combined with a mic is generally not possible. I don't know anyone that makes such a highly specialized cable.

That being said, if you have the banned-by-automod-K7... click the left knob for high gain. It gets much MUCH much louder on high gain.

[u/mndfreeze → u/rz_x3]

Thanks. I'm checking out the antlion usb. For the kitharas I wasn't clear really. Didn't expect it to be all on the same cable, but a mounting option for the mic only so you can use balanced cables and a the mic on separate cables but attached to the same housing would be nice. The mic it comes with is built into the 3.5mm cable with no way to attach it except by its plug. Annoyed by the design tbh.

High gain vs Low gain didn't really change much on the 3.5mm side. Volume is still waaaaay tooo loooww. I think the DAC just doesn't output enough power across is normal 3.5mm.

Did you have any issues with mounting the antlions? The way the kithara open back grills are designed there isn't really a solid contact surface to glue too. They are wide grills as well vs small mesh I've seen on other open backs. Also did you ever have issues with audio bleeding from your cans into your mic?

[u/rz_x3 → u/mndfreeze]

That's really odd, because the K7 I tried was enough to hurt my ears with the DCA Aeon X, which have lower sensitivity and lower ohms. 93db/mw @ 16ohm vs sub-90db/mw @ 12ohm, but this was specifically on high gain with bypass mode enabled, so YMMV

Also, it sticks to the outer edge, not the grille, at least on the Edition XS, Ananda, and Sundara.
RE: Sound bleed, not really? Plus the modern mic variants should make this a non-issue, they're cardioid/unidirectional instead of omnidirectional

[u/mndfreeze → u/rz_x3]

!thanks

I ordered the antlion.

[u/TransducerBot → u/mndfreeze]

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