Personal computing has had its ups and downs of the last 10 years and these have not always been because of consumer reaction. In many cases the manufacturers have failed to meet the expectations of the people they are selling to. One of the biggest places where the market has failed the consumer is when they moved to “good enough” computing. We saw this as far back as the Pentium III when Intel pushed for onboard audio, networking, modem etc. These devices were not the greatest of components, but they were “good enough” in the eyes of the manufacturers. Now the situation is shifting (very slowly) as these components are no longer good enough in the consumer’s eyes. They are demanding more from their hardware. One place where this shift has been the most obvious is in the audio market. Today we have a product that is supposed to fall well outside the good enough range. This is the CMStorm Pulse-R gaming headset. Let’s take a look and see if it really can.
Performance - With audio gear it is hard to be objective. After all different people like different music and even people that like the same music might like to listen to it in different ways. To make sure that I cover the audio products that we get here at DecryptedTech I like to have more than one opinion. Usually I gather 5 other people to listen to different audio types (gaming, movies, MP3 and CD-Audio). I then ask for a rating of one to five with one being the worst and 5 being the best for each category. As an added item I also ask for a single word to describe the audio quality. I then follow up with my personal feelings and observations.
Gaming -Gaming was the easiest one test and also the easiest one to observe. For testing we used one of our favorite games for audio impact; Medal of Honor. To this we added in Left 4 Dead and BioShock Infinite. Between these three we have a nice selection of audio environments. After about an hour of each of these games the score and comments are below:LoudNiceMuddyTinnyBrassy
For my own experience the audio was fairly clean, perhaps a little too clean as the high end sounds seemed louder than the low or mid-range ones. There was good bass that did not have any mud in it, but again the overly loud high end sounds seemed to overpower everything else. This was very present in Left 4 Dead and BioSock Infinite. In Medal of Honor there we ran into something a little odd. With other headsets there was a thump that you could feel during certain parts of the game (especially during combat scenes) this was absent from the Pulse-R despite having good low-end. We attribute this to the poor seal around our ears which is caused by the unusual design of the ear cups. In short the audio quality during our gaming tests was good, but not stellar.
Movies/Video -Movies was an easy one also, I have several Bluray titles that are great for this including Pirates of the Caribbean. So I loaded up this title and then dropped in a couple of other movies that have good surround effects.For the most I ran into the same issues with the audio quality when watching movies as I did during gaming. The high-end sounds seemed to overpower the upper end of the mid-range and what should have been back ground noise surged to the forefront. It was not that it was bad, but it was very obvious when listened to especially in the movies that we use for testing.
Music (MP3 and CD-Audio) -For Music I have a few favorite tracks that I like to use. These are not always other people’s favorites but they serve as a baseline and have some impressive audio features to them that can distinguish between good audio and bad. One of them is Stevie Ray Vaughn’s rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing. It is an amazing track. Other are A Day in the Life by the Beetles, Are you Experienced by Jimi Hendrix, and Cage the Elephant’s Ain’t no Rest for the Wicked. The numbers for this along with their corresponding one word comments are below.
Before we get too far into my opinion on the Pulse-R and its ability to reproduce music I will admit that I am an audiophile (pronounce that audio snob). When I listen to music I look for little details and sounds that should be present in the track. These sounds give the track life and soul. When I was listening with the Pulse-R I found that the things that make a track alive were absent. The audio was very, very clean, but it was missing vibrance and life. This was very disappointing considering the fact that both the Sirus and the Sonuz brought that to the table. Again it is not that the audio is bad, it is just that it was massing what brings the audio to life.
Skype/VoIP -VoIP applications like Skype are not especially intensive on the headphone side of things, but they can be on the microphone. Fortunately the Pulse-R is more than up to the task. In multiple conversation we had no issues with others hearing us and the audio transmitted back was clear and without any distortion.
Other issues -We found that the volume slider did not work all that well, although this could be an issue with the unit that was shipped to us. The problem came up when we were looking for the sweet-spot on the slider. There was not a real graduation of volume. For the majority of the slider length the audio was very subdued, but at the very end the volume became drastically louder despite the relatively minor movement in the slider. It became almost impossible to find that sweet-spot because of this.
