Astro (Logitech) - A40 (Gen 1)

Astro a40 with mixamp, I have not tried the a50s yet. Best headset I have found.

Yeah, the quality of the sound is just bounds ahead of other headsets and has been for years.

My top two for first person shooters are Astro a40s and now beyerdynamics, always wired usb with mic amp.

I personally use Astro a40s and they work great. A lot of people recommend the steelseries arctis nova 7, so if I were you, I'd go for those if you're able to afford them.

My Astro A40 headset never let me down

Wired and no batteries, one that has no app to bug out. No batteries to die in 5 years. No firmware to bork and die. Oh the ancients made those it's a lost art.. Aliens showed us and we forgot. I got my MK1 Mixamp and A40s back when they were current, and with care and (replacing the stock mic entirely) are still going strong, and the surround function still just works. No firmware, no app. Just usb SPDIF and good times.

The only wired ones I tried was the Astro A40 I dont own the mixamp but they still sounded pretty good just connected to controller.

Big on the Astros. Have the A40s and they’ve been phenomenal going on 6 years.

My personal journey to find the perfect audio setup that works for me was long and expensive. Put simply, I tried a ton of the gamer-focused headsets first. Went through a lot, and some of them were actually decent, but in the end, I realized the truth: gamer headphones are not a good value. They put more resources into the branding and aesthetics than they do for actual audio quality. The one exception to this was the Sennheiser/Drop PC38x. These are wired open back headphones with a built-in mic. For me, these were far and away the best sounding "gamer" headphones I ever tried, and it wasn't even close. The open back really opens up the soundstage, which, at least for me, really helped with directional audio. The convenience of the built-in mic was definitely a bonus too. Sadly, it looks like they are no longer making these... maybe Drop or Sennheiser still makes something similar but I haven't looked. I ran the Astro a40's for a long time too. These also have an open back design, but I always found them to be a bit too harsh, and I spent WAY too much time trying to tweak the EQ to get them to sound good. The terrible software didn't help matters either. IEM's are all the rage now. I was skeptical at first, but have found this to be the best way to go. IEM's were always kind of a niche item that was historically expensive for a decent set, but over the last few years, a TON of really good IEM's have hit the market for super cheap. My current favorite set are the Truthear Crinacle Zero Reds. You can find them on sale pretty often for around $50. If that's too much, there are a lot of great options in the $15 - $50 range too. The KZ Castors come to mind: I think I got mine for like $25 and I like these almost as much as the Zero Reds. The Audiovance Vibes 202's are good as well and can be had for around $30. I like them because they sound really great, and I like the cables they come with. And of course, everyone loves the Moondrop Chu II. I have those as well and they are indeed quite good, especially for the price (around $20). The amazing thing is that all of the IEM's I mentioned above sound way better than the in ear monitors I used to use back in my days of playing live music... and they literally cost hundreds of dollars less. It blows my mind. The one downside to IEM's is the lack of a built-in mic. This is easy to get around if you are playing on PC, but a little less convenient if you play on console. I have a dedicated mic for my setup since I do a lot of music recording so it isn't a problem, but if you need a built-in mic, there are cables for IEM's that you can buy that have a little mic built in. I can't really speak to how good they are, but I would think that would work ok plugged directly into your Xbox or PS controller. Anyway, I didn't set out to write a book here when I started this post, but there it is... TLDR; iems are the way to go. Even the Moondrop Chu II's sound significantly better than even the most expensive gamer-focused headsets. And that's before you even consider cost. If you are like me, and your earholes don't generally like earbuds, you may need to experiment with different tips to find something that is comfortable enough to wear for long periods, but once you do it is awesome, and definitely worth the trouble.

You have a solid setup there, which makes my point even more frustrating. You don't have to sell the farm to achieve decent audio performance. Gaming headsets are expensive and, in my experience, perform worse. My guess is that you knew what you wanted to spend and did a decent amount of homework putting something together. I have Astro A40s, steelseries, hd800s, DT1990, Hifiman XS, HE 4XX, HE 400 I, HD 650, HD58X, K702, K7XX and lots more midrange stuff. The A40s and steelseries always perform the worst (imaging) compared to everything else that I own other than the HE 4xx and 400i.

True sweats use studio microphones and headsets. I have astro a40’s and theyve always been fine for me

I went with a40s because I hate dealing with batteries lol