For those of you that have not guessed it yet, I am something of an Audiophile (ok snob). When it comes to the audio on my TV, PC, Car Stereo, etc. it needs to be very good quality. This is especially true on the PC where the sound quality of the games I play can make or break the game experience for me (and many others). Recently Cooler Master released a new gaming head set under their CM Storm line up. As I have found Cooler Master’s recent endeavors into the gaming peripheral world to be of excellent build and quality I wanted to check the new Sirus Gaming headset out. According to the write up the Sirus is true 5.1 surround with three 30mm drivers for front, center and rear along with a 40mm driver for a sub-woofer. Of course that is not all that you get with the Sirus so let’s dive in and see if this $130 headset is worth your time and money.
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. The look on people’s faces as they maneuvered through Medal of Honor 2010 and Modern Warfare 2 was something to see. You could see that they were impressed with the quality by the smiles and the nods I saw. The numbers are shown below, while the words used to describe the gaming quality were; Wow!AwesomeAmazingLoudCoolFor my own part the gaming was incredible. I like first person shooters and have found that many audio cards and speaker sets cannot reproduce the sounds of gun fire or explosions properly. The Sirus headset is probably the closest I have ever heard. If anyone has ever heard the sound of gun fire in close proximity then you know that there is more to it than just a “pop” especially when it is a large caliber weapon like the US M2 .50 Caliber Machine Gun or the Soviet 12.7mm. There is a very low frequency thud (for lack of a better word) that you can feel more than hear with every round that leaves the barrel. The same thing goes for the 30mm canon on the A-10 Warthog. When I was playing through Medal of Honor 2010 again I found the new audio experience was dragging me into the game. The sound was very immersive. Especially using the Tactical Mixing Console, I would highly recommend it for gaming. 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. The response was not as good as the gaming, but still the surround piece did seem to impress. The numbers and words are shown below. The movie quality was not as good as I was expecting. With some of the titles that I played I really wanted something more. I can still remember seeing my first movie with true surround sound and also remember watching my kids as they heard that for the first time in the house. It was magical to watch them follow the sound with their eyes as Stich clattered through the ventilation shaft. However that same magic was not quite in the Sirus. It was good, but it was not quite what I had hoped for.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.The audio playback here was very impressive to me. I own a Tech On Model 55 Tube Amp and usually use that for listening to my music. However I was very impressed with the quality of sound that the Siru put forth. I found the same level of enjoyment from listening to Stevie Ray Vaughn as he hammers out Little Wing on his guitar. You really can hear the buzz of the amp and his fingers sliding up and down the strings… it is very moving.
