Setup, Design & Observations
All you need to get going is a free USB 3.0 port, (or USB 2.0, but the additional USB hub on the microphone will not be available). It will automatically set itself as default input device, but you will want to check this anyway, and it will be ready to go.

For optimal setup, you will want to find the ideal microphone sensitivity depending on how near/far from it you are. The buttons are dials are easily accessible, though the buttons are rather stiff, so you will need a firm grasp on the microphone if you want to push any of them. The dials are silky smooth to rotate.

The headphone jack is purely for monitoring purposes and will play back any sounds being picked up via the microphone and the aux in. The Aux-in can be used to connect anything with an analogue output, including musical instruments or mobile phones. Having an additional USB port on the microphone is incredibly convenient, allowing you to use pretty much any other device you wish with it.

Performance Testing


In our test, we didn't use a pop filter and so there was a fair level of breathy sounds, and we could have used a much higher sensitivity too. The microphone sounds significantly more detailed the closer it is to your mouth, and the closer it is, the lower the sensitivity you will need to use, and the lower the background noises that are picked up, however, considering the level of background noise there was, and how well it dealt with them in both 'Cardioid' and 'Stereo' modes, it is fair to say that the Magnus is very impressive.

The ENC mode is slightly disappointing, not that it doesn't work well, but more in that ASUS didn't create any audio software to support the Magnus, as it would have been nice to be able to control the level of the ENC. It sounds fairly muffled and softened the edge of words considerably, however, it did a great job of cutting out background noises so would be great for very noisy situations.