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. I then follow up with my personal feelings and observations. The Cloud headphones are intended to be a gaming headset so while we wanted to make sure we cover the gaming end of things we also wanted to find out how well they operate with other audio content.
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. Others 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. To this listing we added some jazz, funk, and of course Reggae. 
Our take -
If I were to come up with a single word to describe the audio quality with the Cloud headset it would be: clean. Another one that would work well is tight. The closed drivers created a crisp audio environment. The sounds seemed to snap out at you without mud or distortion. I was impressed with almost all of the selections we use for testing.
Gaming -
So for this test we did something a little different. In addition to our normal testing with desktop games, we decided that we would also throw in a couple of games on our Galaxy Note III just to see how good the audio reproduction is there. Our normal games are Medal of Honor, BioShock Infinite and Modern Warfare 3. These games have different audio qualities that can push a headset nicely.
Our take -
The same tight, clean sound does well in gaming. You can feel the low end punch at you instead of just being there. In BioShock Infinite the explosions are much more impressive than what we have heard from other headsets, but did not over power the other sounds happening.
Movies/Video -
Movies was an easy one also, I have several Blu-ray 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. 
Our Take -
Once again the design of the Cloud headphones (closed 53mm drivers etc) makes using them for watching movies a pleasure. The clean and crisp sounds combined with the lack of outside noises brought a new level of quality to the sounds we have heard from the movies we use for testing.
Comfort -
With their weight and padding the Cloud gaming headset is one of the more comfortable ones we have worn. Even after several hours and when wearing glasses they were not uncomfortable.
The Microphone -
This is an important part of a gamer's headset and Kingston's HyperX team did a great job with the one that comes with the Cloud. During our tests the microphone produced clean and understandable audio. Our voice did not pop when speaking hard consonants or produce hiss for softer ones. Like the rest of the Cloud hardware it is very impressive.
