StarDestroyer.Net BBS

WAY back when gaming on 360, I couldn't get over just how quality (issues with the charger design defect aside) the 360 wireless was. XBLive itself had some really solid voice codex, but more than that the thing was killer at only picking up your voice and not ambient noise. And it was just an ear-piece with a mic, it only did voice, no audio.

I had purchased the official wireless adapter to use with my PC and Teamspeak 3. It worked great with the codex I was using and didn't pick up my PC audio. However, it was prone to lose connection in short bursts which would then send extremely loud static to Teamspeak. The other players were obviously not big fans.

I've since gone to using Plantronics headphones w/ mics. I've had great luck with them, but I get tired of wearing them over my head for hours. Unfortunately, my son managed to get to mine (again) and has jacked them up a fair bit. I'm looking to replace them. I already have a set of 2.1 speakers for general PC shenanigans.

Does anyone recommend a good ear-piece? Plantronics has the 5200 UC, which is bluetooth capable (my PC has BT, but there's issues with W10 picking up the mic unless you use the provided fob, of which this one has). But it's also $180 and I'm not crazy about dumping that kind of cash without putting one in my ear.

My advice would be to pick up a cheap desktop mic (you can get a perfectly acceptable one for about a tenner) and spending the majority of your money on some really good headphones, or just using your speakers for that matter.

I have a really solid USB desktop mic, but it's bad about picking up ambient noise from both the room and the computer speakers. Mostly it picks up the voice output from TS3 on my speakers and starts a loopback. It's really difficult and annoying to fine-tune it. And this makes it so I ALSO have to turn down the gaming sounds to a level where they almost aren't worth having on.

Headphones, the set I have wraps fully around my ears, dull the speaker sound too much.

And my speakers themselves do not output voice chat all that well. I could spend the money on a better set of both, but a headset would let me keep my current speakers which work great for everything else.

I got a "Turtle Beach Ear Force Recon" from Bestbuy a few weeks ago for $40. It doesn't seem to pick up on any ambient noise, including watching movies via my stereo system while it was plugged in less than a foot from the speaker. My voice sounds a little bit tinny, but it's not too bad. I haven't noticed any issues with the headphone speakers while watching movies/playing games, which is good for a $40 set. In addition, the phones go around the ear, which is nice.

On the other hand, I'm not an audiophile, so take that for what it's worth.
It's also a wired headset, so that might not fit your requirements.