SteelSeries has been on something of a roll recently, with their redesigned Arctis Nova Pro headsets and new Arena speakers both attracting plaudits from press – including Eurogamer – and users alike for their design, audio quality and software. Now the Danish firm has turned its attention to the other side of audio: microphones. We’ve seen even great audio brands like Epos fail to deliver a convincing microphone for the gaming and streaming market, so how does SteelSeries fare with its Alias and Alias Pro microphones? In a word: superbly.
Let’s start at the beginning. The Alias microphones are both built around a one-inch condenser capsule in a cardioid pattern, designed to capture your voice while sitting at a PC – rather than the Blue Yeti approach of offering four different pickup patterns for different recording scenarios that use up to four smaller capsules in combination. This focus allows for a noticeably slimmer microphone without sacrificing on sound quality. (The Alias’s main body is around 190x55x45mm or 470cm³, compared to the 702cm³ Blue Yeti X and 590cm³ Shure SM7B.)
The difference between the Alias and Alias Pro is how they connect to your PC – both ultimately attach via USB, but the Alias connects directly with controls built into the body of the microphone, while the Alias Pro comes with a small audio interface that it connects to via an XLR cable. Despite this, both models can be controlled via SteelSeries’ Sonar software and both are designed to be plug-and-play options that don’t require other hardware to sound great. The Alias Pro mic works with another XLR interfaces – and the interface works with other XLR mics – but the focus here is on maximising usability and sound quality with these two components working in tandem; later upgradeability is more of a bonus than a core feature.
1 of 6 Caption Attribution The Alias microphone has everything in one, with dials front (monitor volume) and rear (gain), a tappable mute button, 3.5mm jack and USB-C interface. Multi-colour LEDs indicate when the mic is muted or current levels.
No matter which model you choose, audio quality is excellent, with my voice coming across with depth and clarity without being overly picky about positioning. Condenser mics are well-known for capturing plenty of detail from your voice, in contrast to dynamic mics that are less sensitive but better at rejecting off-axis sounds. (That means you’re a little more dependent on techniques like AI noise cancelling to remove any interruptions, and indeed we see the Sonar software does implement this – along with other essential features like a noise gate and compressor.) There’s also a provided shock mount that expertly reduces handling noise, and both microphones come with a decent desk stand as well – though a microphone arm allows for significantly better positioning of these side-address microphones and we’d always recommend this.