I've been a PC gamer for a good 7-8 years, but I've only owned one headset that entire time (PX-21). I've always been too afraid to go out and buy a really expensive headset and have it sound really bad, or the quality bad (not like the PX-21's quality is any good, I have these glued together right now).
So anyways, about what I wanted. All I want is something that is good for music, like that has good bass and treble and all that, I honestly don't even know what I'm talking about. I just want something that sounds good.
Now with gaming headsets, you get a mic included. I know this is bad because that means they sacrifice some speaker quality on the inside. This would mean i'd have to get a desk mic, but I don't have space on my desk except for a little ways back behind my keyboard. I'm not sure if this would create an echo effect or make me sound far away and crappy, but my friend got a new mic and constantly sounds like he's across the room. I also don't want a mic that would make my voice sound a lot higher or lower than it actually is. My friend's mic does this, he sounds totally different if hes on his phone for example.
After I pick my headphones and mic with help from here (hopefully), I wanted to have it set up a certain way, but I don't know how to do this. On my current headset, there is a "game" volume control, and a "chat" volume control. The cable at the end splits into USB and the little green cable, which basically makes my computer think there's two different headsets plugged in. This lets me play certain things through the chat volume and certain things through the game volume (Teamspeak/skype over chat, music/games over game). I have no idea how to do this on a normal pair of headphones without the volume controls.
Also, if there's a way to record chat and game volume but on separate "channels", that would be great. Am I able to do this with some kind of capture card? If no one can answer this it's not a big deal.
I'll be using these at my desk exclusively, so open back with an amp is fine. The budget is $1000 and under.
Thank you for the help!