[ROG Delta II] Microphone sound chopping/parts of waveform lost

[Obsidian_owl]

I recently purchased a ROG Delta II. They are good headphones, however I have encountered a strange problem with the microphone. When recording sound on the microphone, low volume sounds are intermittent, sounding like a robotic sound in places. Visually it looks like a misconfigured noise gate

It seems to be that the positive and negative half-wave have different threshold levels, because of which the lower half-wave can be cut off in amplitude from below, as a consequence, instead of a smooth transition through zero you get a step (marked in green), or the lower half-wave disappears altogether (marked in red). I am not familiar with the circuitry of this model, but knowing in general the connections of microphones, I assume that this is most likely a problem with the firmware, rather than hardware. It is also definitely not drivers/windows, such artifacts are also present when recording sound on the phone when connected via bluetooth

This problem is particularly noticeable at low input sounds such as ambient noise and the end of a spoken phrase. The current mitigation method is to use RTX Voice, but that's fighting the effects, it doesn't fix the problem itself

I have the latest updates installed at the time of writing the post:

[Aureliannn_ROG]

Hi @Obsidian_owl ,

Thank you for your inquiry. 

To better understand the ROG Delta II headphone microphone issue you are experiencing, please provide the following information:

1. Device test confirmation: Does this microphone issue only occur on the ROG Delta II headphones?
   Please confirm if the same problem occurs with other devices (such as other headphones or microphones).
2. Recording test confirmation: When recording at low volume, have you confirmed that the microphone is close to your mouth?

Please kindly confirm the above information so that we can further analyze the problem. 

Thank you for your cooperation.

[Obsidian_owl]

Hi @Aureliannn_ROG ,
1. Yes, it only happens on Delta II. I also own Rog Delta (wired) and Boya 3.5 microphone - none of them have such issues.

2. Yes, I tested it with the mic closer or further away from my mouth, the problem is present either way.

Additionally looking at waveform of another recording in log scale i noticed there is a DC offset present.

In this screenshot of the recording there are no sounds (i'm not talking and there is silence in the room, no ambient sounds) in the first 5 seconds, but the signal strength is noticeably non-zero. I have at this point submitted a request to Asus tech support, but I'm not sure if it's a defect with my particular unit. It may be a hardware problem, but it is still fixable at the firmware level, as far as I know about signal processing.