If you’ve read any of my reviews on headphones before, you’ll know that I’m a big fan (insert meme of big fan here) of NOT having your microphone permanently in front of your face. Whether it’s detachable, slide-uppy-inside-the-device-able, or just out of the way, that’s a big plus in my book. So, when Regardt told me he was going to be hand delivering a studio mic to my very door, I was giddier than a goose on Gaggle Street. Finally, I could live thing-in-my-face free, while blurting out nonsense on stream or pretending to have valuable input in that Teams meeting. If I didn’t ask for it in my face, please don’t leave it there.
The Cougar Screamer X has just been all round satisfying from start to finish. The box is big and solid. It has a neat foam cut out for each piece inside of it and the microphone itself just looks so professional in there, waiting for me to slowly peel it from its slumber, squeeze it into its stand, plug it in, and scream at it. And I did, quite quickly.
Out of the box you get one times sexy RGB stand that is powered by USB-C and has a spare USB3.0 Port on the back, it’s not addressable or anything like that, but there’s a small button at the back that you can tickle to get it to light up in different ways. The stand also bends in most ways you’d need it to.
Next, one times snazzy little pop-filter to keep things clean. It’s detachable and rotatable so you can play with it right side up or wrong side down (wait, no, wrong side up? Upside down, it’s upside down just go with it), long enough cables to reach, almost, anywhere and of course the Cougar Scream X itself.
Ok, ok, lame attempts at trying to smut out his microphone aside, let me tell you what I really thought of the Cougar Screamer X.
This is my first studio microphone, so all I really have to compare it to are headphone microphones and I can immediately say, this microphone takes the cake, no questions asked. Just listening to a few recordings of myself I could already hear how much clearer and crisper I sounded. Yes, it does sound a little “roomy” if it’s not directly under my chin, but it didn’t really bother me unless I was recording something for real, for real, you know, like, for my Survivor entry tape, I was perfectly ok with it being a little bit further back. Now I’m not saying that I wouldn’t want it to be closer, but I just don’t have the desk space to do that without having a boom arm or something similar, this stand does take up a whole plate of space and I already have my lasagne in that spot.
The built-in directional capture settings also worked pretty well, I did add a few tweaks on my recording software, but for when I was just shooting the shit in meetings, I didn’t get any complaints of my dog making big sighs for his breakfast. It has Cardioid and Shotgun modes for when you’re hanging solo, as well as Omni and Bi-Directional modes for when you’re recording with friends for a podcast or a group chat or something. I did find, however, that the built-in noise cancelling was too much, it cut my own voice off way to often and made me sound like I was in a box full of boxes with a box over my head.
All in all, I was extremely satisfied with the Cougar Screamer-X. It’s got great build quality, and fancy, flashy lights on the bottom but mostly; it does what it was built to do well, which is listening to me ramble on all day about things and such.