Last time we visited the headphone arena with Voyetra Turtle Beach, we felt like we got hosed. To sum it up, we felt the directional audio was very lacking to say the least. This time around we gave it another shot - the catch is that the headphones being reviewed here come equipped with a USB sound card. In normal situations one would just scoff at the idea of a USB sound card and pass it off as a cheap trick. However, as you read on you'll be surprised and sometimes shocked at what a difference a 'closed' system can make. We emphasize with peripheral reviews that personal preference plays a large role in determining the final score. As mentioned by a fellow writer here before - qualitative and quantitative assessments will be made that help reach that score. That being said, the goal of this review is to supply you with as much information as possible about the personal experience that comes from using the headset in gaming, musical, and movie applications, as well as synthetic and real world benchmarking of the USB sound card itself.

Specifications

Hardware Configuration

• Case: Antec Solo
• Power Supply: Antec TruePower Trio 650
• Motherboard: Universal abit Fatal1ty AN9 32X
• Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+
• Hard Drive: Western Digital 100GB IDE HDD
• Hard Drive: Seagate 300GB SATA HDD
• Hard Drive: Maxtor 250GB SATA HDD
• Video: eVGA GeForce 7800GT 256MB GDDR3 VIVO PCI Express
• Memory: Mushkin EM6400 Dual-Channel PC2 6400 2048MB
• Optical: Lite-On 8x DVD+/-RW
• Audio: abit Realtek AudioMAX 7.1 HD Riser Card
• Audio: SteelSeries 5H v2 Headphones
• Audio: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
• Cooling: Zalman CNPS9500 AM2 CPU Cooler
• Display: Samsung Syncmaster 710N 17" LCD

• Motherboard BIOS: v1.2 Beta 1 (03/29/2007)
• Chipset: nForce 590 SLI AMD Windows XP 32-Bit v9.35 WHQL Certified
• Operating System: Windows XP Media Center Edition with Service Pack 2
• Video Driver: NVIDIA ForceWare Version 158.27 WHQL 32-bit WHQL Certified (May 15th release)
• Audio Driver: Realtek HD R1.70 (6/28/2007)
• Audio Driver: SteelSeries SteelSound v2.0
• Audio Driver: Creative SB Audigy 2 Series 02.09.0016 (10/09/2006)
• Audio Driver: Audio Advantage SRM (5/9/2007)
• Test Software: RightMark Audio Analyzer 6.0.5
• Test Software: RightMark 3DSound CPU Utilization Test 2.3
• Test Software: foobar2000 v0.9.4.3
• Test Software: VLC Media Player v0.8.6c
• Test Game: Valve Software - Half-Life 2: Episode One
• Test Game: Valve Software - Counter-Strike: Source
• Test Game: Valve Software - Counter-Strike 1.6
• Test Game: Digital Illusions CE - Battlefield 2142
• Test Game: Bethesda Softworks - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
• Test Game: Monolith Productions, Inc. - F.E.A.R.
• Test Game: Infinity Ward - Call of Duty 2
• Test Game: GSC Game World - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
• Test Game: Human Head Studios - Prey
• Test Game: Codemasters - Colin McRae: DiRT
• Test Game: Electronic Arts Games - Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
• Test Game: EA Black Box - Need for Speed: Carbon