I’ve been borrowing my friend’s Microsoft LifeChat headset…I’m not even sure on the details, but a long story short, I liked it a lot. I’ve been using it for online gaming, and generally as a headset for listening to music on my computer. Good sound quality, nothing to argue about really. With Christmas here, and the holiday season in general, it was time for me to figure out what I wanted. There’s nothing I “need”, per se, just a list of things I’d like to have, which always makes it the more difficult to figure out what I should get. I felt a good gaming headset would do, second to an extra internal hard drive for my laptop (running out of space thanks to all the games I store on here is a big issue for me). There were only two names I knew in gaming headsets at the time: AudioFX Pro 5+1, and Turtle Beach. That’s a problem, especially when you’re gonna buy a product from a market that doesn’t give you too much of a “try it then buy it” name. You’re not gonna find the best gaming headsets in stores, so I was stuck to this knowledge. I was given information from other people, but the Apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree…I ended up getting the AudioFX Pro 5+1 headset. Before I go on to explain what I think about the headset, let’s begin with a little back story. The AudioFX Pro 5+1 gaming headset was design by Benjamin Heckendorn alongside eDimensional. Benjamin Heckendorn, or simply Ben Heck, is the best man out there with modding hardware. He’s best known for taking home consoles and turning them into portables. A simple feat with old consoles, such as Atari 2600′s for him, but he’s also created Xbox 360 laptops. This genius decided it was time to get a product out there on the market, and it turned out to be a gaming headset. The AudioFX Pro 5+1, designed alongside company eDimensional. A year or two later here we are, and I have my own. Let’s jump into the review.
Comfortability
The first thing you notice when you put on a headset, plug yourself into earphones, or immerse yourself into a world of music is how comfortable said thing is. Using the Microsoft LifeChat headset, there was always a fair amount of heat collecting with my ears. A sweaty, squeegy feeling would exist. Contrarily, the AudioFX headset is very comfortable. Both headsets are practically unnoticeable when wearing them, but the AudioFX has no collection of sweat around and on your ears. Plenty of space for them to breathe I suppose. They also have larger cups, possibly another reason why they are so enjoyable on your head. Score one for comfort in gaming!
Microphone quality
I use Skype on a daily basis with people I’ve never even met. This is the perfect place to test initial microphone quality, through the opinion of others in the call and from the Skype Test Call contact “echo123″, who will record my microphone for 10 seconds and play back what they received. Bad internet connection out of the way, I first introduced the headset to Skype before anything else, I was already in a call anyway. Some shock at the improvement of quality between my internal microphone and the headset, but they had no idea I switched. From initial feedback, I had good quality. Described as “clear but quiet”. So far so good, so I gave Skype Test Call a ring. The playback I got was excellent. The quality is great for a headset. Now we’re not talking microphones that you hold in your hand for live performances, although those are good (particularly the Rock Band 2 microphone, that thing has excellent quality, but I digress). However, this microphone has great clarity. Comparable to the sound quality from your local news anchors: just a notch lower in clarity, and this is a microphone much closer to your face, so your mouth is practically an inch away from it, which creates an effect of contained audio, not very out there, but more coming from one obvious source. One thing I did notice as well was a constant but very low white noise in the background. It doesn’t disappear when you’re talking either, just stays there, which makes me come to assume that acoustics are not to blame, but rather the microphone itself, and the way it’s receiving noise around it. Maybe some enhancement software on the computer side could clear out the white noise, but I didn’t look into it.
Music quality
Now this is where the headset loses it’s most strength. My first reaction: that’s some extreme treble! I’m not sure what they had in mind when they got this headset loaded with speakers, but whatever it is, it’s not working. I got extremely caught up with messing with some enhancements settings for the headset in Windows. For me, I can get some good quality music out of this headset by setting Bass Boost on, with a frequency of 100Hz and a boost level of 6 dB. At this point the large issue of the headset from before is solved. Previously the audio is very scratchy, and there’s a heavy inequality between different instruments. If you’ve got just the drums, you’ll hear only the drums, but when you mix it all together, the drum piece will decide to dim down, and other parts of the song rise above others in an awkward combination that throws off the equality of the song. The higher the volume goes, the sooner the music gets really distorted. With the Bass Boost enhancement, clarity becomes much more apparent, but at a sacrifice: a heavy and overpowering bass. As a kid who absolutely loves a pumping bass, this isn’t totally a bad thing, but I know there’s some people who will come to detest this. Even when I found the previously mentioned settings for the enhancement, I became annoyed by the audio it produced yet again. When it comes to the 5.1 surround sound, there’s nothing all that noticeable. I mean, it does sound like a surround environment, but if this is because of the bass, or because of the 5.1, I’m not sure. Ultimately, if you’re an audiophile, or you’re picky about how your music sounds, this isn’t the headset to go for. There’s much better headsets out there for you to enjoy your music in more clarity.
Gaming quality
At the end of the music part of the review, I hadn’t even played a game with the headset yet. What better game to try it out with than with Modern Warfare 2? I fired up my multiplayer copy of MW2 on Steam, ready to experience something better than what I heard when listening to music. I was met with an unfortunate opposite. The booming bass continued to blast for no reason. Force Feedback played no important role whatsoever in the experience. The game’s audio was unbalanced and at extreme levels, much like the music was previously. I was extremely disappointed to realize that this headset isn’t a true masterpiece in any form of producing audio of fair quality. At this point I switched back over to the Microsoft LifeChat headset. All the beliefs I hyped up in my head about the quality of the headset being decent enough disappeared. Even though the LifeChat is a much cheaper piece of technology, it stood up above and beyond the AudioFX Pro headset.
Conclusion
Ben Heck has always been a genius to me with technology, but this time he stepped out of his boundaries and tried something new. After using this headset it’s obvious he has no experience in this area. A decent try on his part (the design is nice, it’s truly fitting to any gaming environment), but the audio simply fails in comparison to every other aspect of this headset. I’m truly disappointed in the gift I received, and disappointed on my behalf, for not having looked into a more decent gaming headset. Fortunately NewEgg has a nice return policy. Losing 15% of the sale price when returning the headset to them isn’t too bad. If it’s for a much more decent, headset, I find it well worth it. Next up: the Creative Fatal1ty MK II. It gets good reviews in sound quality, and that’s very important to me.
