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The Voice & Game Quality Test
Now where the rubber hits the road (and the rocket hits the n00b) - how do they sound in Ventrilo, Skype, and positional audio. These conditions represent the sort of use to which the average gamer will be putting this headset - voice communications and in-game audio cues.
To get a sense of voice clarity, I handed this off to my minion assistant, while we discussed the relative merits of DDR2 and DDR3 RAM over Skype. Not only did my assistant come through clearly, but more clearly than any other headset that we had used in previous discussions - mostly low to mid-grade Plantronics headsets, with an occasional Logitech thrown in for good measure.
The next step was to test in-game audio, and we fired up an Unreal Tournament 3 map rotation. Positional audio was good, he reported, comparable to the reference headphones on a Soundmax HD Audio chipset, the same as built into the ASUS Commando motherboard. In Mac testing, positional audio was quite good in Unreal Tournament 2004, if perhaps a bit exaggerated. You'll only notice this until you start playing, however - then, the total lack of ambiguity regarding the source of that sound means you know without any ambiguity where incoming fire is coming from - a phenomenon that back in the dark ages had gotten professional gamers banned from their Steam accounts on accusation of wallhacks... yes, adequate positional audio (AKA "Radar by SennheiserTM") is just that powerful. The ear fatigue I noticed during music testing was essentially absent, suggesting either a normal headache, or issues with over-tuning the equalizer. I feel I am tempted to be perhaps too brief in this section. Despite this, my testing was not cursory - they just proved themselves to be a solid choice in gaming audio quickly and unambiguously.
Now, I mentioned Mac-side testing, but if you check the packaging, OSX support is distinctive only in its absence. The good news is that these things work without drivers, but setup is more complicated than expected - under both Windows XP and Mac. "But," one might argue, "It came with drivers to be installed!" While this is true, USB headsets are a standard part of the USB specification and therefore basic functionality should be entirely out-of-the-box and automagical using drivers provided by the operating system. Plug-and-play was more like plug-and-pray; under Windows, the headset co opted all sound output, (though this is sometimes desirable) and the in-line volume controls didn't work (never desirable). Under OSX, the controls proved to be soft buttons, interfacing smoothly with OSX's built-in software volume control. But it wasn't until system sound output was changed in Sound under System Preferences that there was anything for those buttons to control. Not hard, certainly not a deal breaker, just a minor annoyance once you know what to do.
Conclusion
These headphones turned out to be surprisingly solid compared to both expectations and the reference headset - even taking into account the poor implementation of the USB audio standards. The microphone and speakers both featured clean sound, excellent fidelity, and were definitely comfortable enough for extended use. The isolation was not so severe as to put off those who were not expecting any, but was sufficient to mute noise leakage somewhat - it will not be silent, but it takes the edge off. Cyber Snipa has a fairly solid product on their hand, which can be had for about $77 on their e-store. If you want something for first-person gaming, something that sounds better than your entry-level headset, or something to fit a large head, give the Sonar 5.1 a look.
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