Jan 12
5
The Xbox 360 Wireless Microphone lets you sing and talk with certain Xbox games that support the Xbox 360 Wireless Microphone.
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The wireless 360 LIPS microhpone mics are extremely well made. Alot fancier then the standard USB microphones used in Guitar Hero, Rock Band or Karaoke Revolution games. They sound better as well. Less distortion then the USB mics. The mics are comfortable and have flashing lights to give them a little bit of flare. Thats personal taste. But I thought it was nice.
So why are these mics good and not great…well they have flaws. The system of turning the mic on and off is honestly rediculous and confusing. The system of connecting your mic with the xbox 360 is equally rediculous and confusing. They use LED light indicators to show when a mic is on or off, when the batteries are running low. Things of that nature. But I’ll be darned if I could totally figure it out. They did it this way to avoid putting buttons on the Mic. I can understand that…but it makes it a royal pain to get it up and started.
The next flaw is of course game compatibility. Most games that this works with, it works with perfectly. LIPS of course, flawless. The Beatles Rock Band, flawless. Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero almost flawless, however sometimes they have trouble recognizing the mic. You may have to go into the options and make sure the mic has been selected or it won’t work. Not hard but it sometimes happens. Then we come to Rock Band 2….ok…heres the thing. They added the online patch for Rock Band 2, as reviewers have noted, you need that patch. If you can’t connect to Xbox Live to update. You won’t be able to play these on Rock Band 2 right out the box. The next thing is…the lag…the lag is not necessarily as bad as I thought it would be. In fact it doesn’t really sound as much like a lag, more like a background echo. It depends on what type of person you are…I can tolerate it. But if your a perfectionist. It could be annoying. You can try some fixes, lowering your mic volume will reduce the echo. You’ll barely be able to hear yourself. But you should still perform well on the game.
Overall I found the mic worth it. But I enjoy LIPS alot…which is what its made for. If you want to buy this just for Rock Band 2 for an all wireless setup. Wait awhile. Because its not perfect. If you want to buy this for several music based games however. I saw go for it. Its a good mic, but it does have flaws which prevent it from being great.
First thing’s first: On 9/25/2009, an update was released to enable functionality of this microphone with all Rock Band games (thus, previous reviews mentioning that issue are now moot). I can confirm that the mic now does “work” with all Rock Band games.
However, the functionality of this microphone is utterly horrid (with the Rock Band games). In short: there is a very noticeable lag when singing into the microphone. The lag causes you to hear an echo when singing in game and causes your timing and pitch to go out of whack – making it near impossible to play songs on harder skill levels. In order to confirm that there was definitely an un-fixable issue with the wireless microphone, I did a little test and played a specific song on both the stock/corded and wireless microphones (both multiple times). Each time, I got double (sometimes triple) the score with the stock/corded microphone. It appears that the lag introduced by the wireless microphone is throwing off the timing, and it may have an issue with the pitch as well (however, I can’t confirm the latter).
Let me stop for a second and state that I have exhausted all avenues of trying to correct this problem. I’ve tried calibrating the audio/video lag in the Rock Band settings, and I’ve tried switching audio sources (from TV to receiver). This lag issue is a result of a poor wireless connection between the microphone and the game console – meaning that no in-game setting can fix the issue. It should also be noted that numerous users on the Rock Band forums are complaining about this very same issue with both the wireless microphone and the “Lips” microphones.
Is this something that can be corrected through a future update? doubtful. First of all, the issue is likely hardware related. If there is just a laggy connection between the microphone and the xbox, then no software can fix that. Further, it took about 8 months since introduction for Rock Band to issue this update (on 9/25) so I highly doubt that their development team is going to jump to fix this particular issue. Plus, the microphone still “functions” – it’s just a much worse experience than using the corded microphone.
So in conclusion, I absolutely recommend against purchasing this microphone. At $50, you’re paying a lot of money to remove the wire from your existing microphone. If the thing doesn’t work just as well as your corded mic, it’s certainly not worth $50. Also, if you’re really into getting high scores through the vocal sections, you will encounter nothing but frustration with the timing issues. Personally, I rarely even sing and I couldn’t deal with the lag and the echo, so I know that it’ll really irritate the hard core singers.
If you absolutely must go “all wireless” with your Rock Band setup, I’d advise you to wait and see if Rock Band officially announces a fix. If not, make sure you have an easy means to return the mic in the event that the lag affects you.
Happy gaming!
I actually love this Mic and if it weren’t for some key features I would of returned since it currently has not been patched to work in Rock Band 1 or 2. Hopefully by the time the Beatles Rock Band comes out this will be working.
Pros:
Battery Life lasted about 3 weeks and has a sleep mode when not being used.
Material is nice to feel and it’s pretty durable.
Wireless works fine and it’s range is a lot more then I ever needed.
Looks great with the lights but they only really come into play with the game “Lips” by Microsoft.
A lot better then the standard Mics that ship with most Rhythm games.
Has a motion sensor in it which some games take advantage of.
Cons:
A little tricky to sync at first but after that I never had a problem.
Does not work with Rock Band yet. (apparently this shouldn’t be an issue by mid-late September.)
The top of the microphone twists off so you can put in the batteries. It locks in but always feels loose.
The base is little thick. If you use a Mic stand make sure you have a Microphone clamp to hold it.
Happy with my purchase overall but I really want to test this thing out in Rock Band.
