Sharing a room - discord with friends

January 6, 2023 8:23 AM

I'm struggling to find a solid gaming headset / setup to go on discord with friends on PC. The issue is that my wife and I play together in the same room, with two friends cross country. There is always a TERRIBLE echo. What hardware would be best to avoid echo? What layout of room?

Here's my requirements in order of priority:
1. Comfortable
2. Lowest echo
3. Wireless would be nice I guess? But not at sacrifice 1/2)
4. Price (prefer under $200)
5. Sound... matters the least.

I am open to non-gaming headsets or separate headsets/mics if you think that would be beneficial to the cause. Our friends say we echo a LOT and we can also hear each other in each others headsets on our old hyperX cloud 2s. Thanks so much!

posted by bbqturtle to Shopping (7 answers total)

Are you using push-to-talk? If not, that's the obvious, easy first step. I know some people dislike the extra step to speak, but every mouse I've bought in the past fifteen years has had extra thumb buttons, and I just bind one of them to PTT. I don't even really think about it anymore. It won't solve the "you're both talking simultaneously" problem, but it will cut down on "person 1 is talking but being picked up by person 2's headset while person 2 is silent" issues.
posted by Alterscape at 8:29 AM on January 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

My partner and I used to be in the same WoW raids/Discord voice chat for raid organisation while playing in the same room, and push to talk was our solution too. I had a gaming headset with mic, partner had a microphone on his desk and a set of headphones without a mic (which is to say, PTT can be a good fit for a range of setups). It was occasionally slightly freaky to hear him speak in the room and then hear what he said on Discord a few seconds later, and even more occasionally I could be heard sneezing or something in the background while he had PTT on, but we didn't have any issues with echo or feedback.
posted by terretu at 8:53 AM on January 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

When you say echo do you mean you hear your wife say a thing with your ears, then shortly afterwards hear her say it on the chat? Because the only way you're going to stop that completely is by using sound-blocking in-ear monitors so you only hear her in the chat.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:42 AM on January 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Just a thought, go into your discord settings and to voice & video, down in advanced there are a few options for noise and echo cancellation. If those aren't enabled, try that.

The headphones I am using right now are Razer Blackshark V2 wirelesses, I've always gotten compliments on them but they're a bit expensive right now. I can recommend Steelseries 7P as well, incredible sound and very comfortable. For $90 they're an absolute steal.

I would make sure the microphone is very close to your mouth and turn the gain down on it in the audio settings. Ultimately though PTT might be necessary.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 10:23 AM on January 6, 2023

Start with sound treatment (eggcrate foam, fiberglass traps, etc) on the walls. The sound treatment will help regardless of what other solutions you go with. I've a heard of headsets with "sound-cancelling microphones" which seem ideal for this situation. You also need a sound barrier between the two of you, just plexiglass would be fine. If you can be facing each other, you could try stand-alone cardiod microphones.

Summarizing, physically block sound from going from your mouth to her microphone and give it somewhere else to be absorbed instead of reflecting.
posted by flimflam at 11:00 AM on January 6, 2023

Oh, another idea: omnidirectional mic between you and the other is muted. Can't have echoes with only one input!
posted by flimflam at 3:05 PM on January 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

My husband and I solve this by sharing one freestanding mic between us. This will probably work less well if you're not side-by-side though.
posted by stillnocturnal at 1:53 AM on January 7, 2023 [1 favorite]