Sharkoon Xtatic Digital 5.1 Gaming Headset

O.K. I bought this headset for gaming purposes only, on my PS3 to be exact. So that will be the basis of my opinions. Here is a list of criterias that I think are most important.

#1-Aesthetics: They look great. Bulky and a bit heavy, but that's to be expected considering they have 8 drivers in total crammed inside of them. In this criteria I have nothing to complain about.

#2-Comfort: Comfortable ear pads are nicely designed but overall to big for my little head. In fact this is the first time that I purchased headsets that don't fit me. Even after adjusting them all the way down, all the weight is on the top of my head, I think they were designed for gorillas.

#3 Sound: This is the most important of all criterias for this product, so I will categorize them in pro's and con's.
-Pro's: It's necessary to point out that you should use the optical connector to fully optimize the Dolby digital features, which the installation instructions
adequately demonstrate. You do get true positional surround sound in fronts centers and rears enhanced with a sub woofer. Volumes are completely
adjustable to fine tune it to your liking.
-Cons: Well I was disappointed over a lack of richness in the sound quality itself. The drivers feel weak and if you increase the volume the sound becomes
distorted. The subwoofer does not compliment the other channels and seems as a separate source and does not blend well. Although the surround
feature does function, it does not do it well again lacking in clear volume.
The incoming voice chat volume cannot be independently controlled on the fly with existing controls and instead must be adjusted in the games menu
only.

Overal,l I cant recommend these headphones to anyone who deems sound fidelity to be important.
On the up side, the ordering and shipping(which only took 1 day) of this product from Amazon was outstanding.

As gamer who is stuck using headphones due to noise level concerns, I decided to give these a try. They work as advertised providing full surround sound. I was pretty impressed with the accuracy considering its a headset. The mic works fine with both ps3/xbox, and it was easy enough to setup.

Where this product really fails is in overall audio quality, low-midrange audio sound fairly good, but once you get into the higher frequencies it sounds like its a clock radio. I assume this is one of the problems faced when trying to fit 8 speakers in a single headset. Regardless it can be a real deal breaker if your trying to watch a movie.

Pros:
Fairly accurate surround
Strong Bass
ComfortableComfortable through several hours of use

Cons:
Terrible mid-high range quality
Not as accurate even a cheap home theater system
All sorts of buttons to screw with which often just make it sound worse

My opinion, skip these, pickup a nice set of normal headphones. Though I really like this package the sound quality is just terrible. You should be able to get a pair of Sennheiser HD555's for around the same price and they sound great. The small advantage you gain from surround sound is not worth the pain of listening to these.

I bought this headset after reading numerous reviews raving about the amazing directional sound and incredible sound quality. But after a long time fiddling with every setting I could find, I just could not squeeze out any more sound quality leaving me no option except to return the headset.

To start off, the installation is not as difficult as everyone makes it out to be as long as you know where each piece goes. I had mine up in less than ten minutes. After setting everything up optimally and making sure everything was set up right, I decided to first try out some music first in 2.1, then simulated 5.1 (as I don't have any 5.1 tracks). In short, I found the sound to be extremely tinny and shallow. I had to turn up the sub quite a bit if I wanted any decently loud bass out of them. The mids didn't seem to be as clean or as loud as the highs and the bass just sounded off. Not enough depth or power. And the worst is that when I turned up the volume (either on my PC, the little amp, or on the headset itself) there was an incredible amount of distortion which made it almost unbearable to listen to. Very unimpressed.

But being optimistic, I moved on and booted up the new Medal of Honor game since it seems to have some amazing sound and awesome 5.1 output. As soon as the menus popped up and I went through them... more distortion in the menus. Being even more optimistic I was hoping it was just the games sound effects so I went and played a game. The distortion was still there and it was making my ears bleed. Could it be my sound card? Could it be a setting somewhere I'm missing? I had no idea. But I was amazingly unimpressed. The only thing that seemed good was the directional sound, but even then I preferred my traditional stereo headset as it seemed like it was less... fake.

Hoping for a better result, I plugged the headset into my xbox, fired it up, set up everything and then... The same result. Good directional sound, but unbearable distortion.

As for comfort, I found the headset to be very large and cumbersome and not very comfortable to wear. It pressed too much on my ears instead of putting the pressure around them and while the foam rings may look soft and comfy, they are definitely not.

In conclusion, Sharkoon took all of my happy optimism from spending a good amount of cash on a high quality headset and tore it into little peices, burned it and pissed on the ashes while making sure not to leave any spec of dust uncovered by its putrid yellow liquid. Good directional sound (I still find stereo better), terrible everywhere else.