Friday, October 1st 2010
SteelSeries Intros Blue Siberia V2 Gaming Headset
SteelSeries released its Siberia V2 gaming headset in a new limited-edition blue model. The scheme includes blue on its phones, and mostly-white head-band, and white . The headphone portion makes use of 50 mm drivers with 10 Hz to 28 KHz frequency response, leather is made use of in its around-the-year cushion that offers passive noise dampening. A unidirectional microphone sticks out. There are basic local volume controls. It is priced at €79.99.
Source:
SK Gaming
19 Comments on SteelSeries Intros Blue Siberia V2 Gaming Headset
I've had some Senns, Koss, AKG and I can say that Siberias being gaming headsets are good enough for music, on the PC anyway, even with Xonars or X-Fi anything better does not make a difference really.
Sounds to me like lots of bias and little experience. There are some impressive gaming headsets out there.
BTW, are you familiar with Sennheiser's PC350, or Beyer's MMX 300? Both are "gaming headsets." FYI the MMX 300 is basically a DT 770 with a boom mic.
I went through my fair share of "gaming" headsets and all of them are terrible. Their only advantage over a pair of normal headphones is the fact that they have an integrated microphone.
Even the Sennheiser PC 350's sound like mud if you compare them to a pair of Senn 595s (even though it seems they have the same driver!)
Also, please note that a pair of Beyedynamic DTX900s with some EQ tweaks to make the highs more pronounced, were better in gaming than some SteelSeries Siberias / 5HV2 (it was easier for me to hear where the sounds were coming from).
Right now, if you get a pair of Sennheiser HD448s or a pair of Beyedynamic DTX910 you can't go wrong with them.
If you want a mic, just a get a 10$ one or the Zalman clip-on mic.
PS: Haven't tried the MMX 300s but aren't they a couple of hundred $?
I'm not trying to jump down your throat, but blanket statements like that have the power to mislead a lot of people reading the forums. There are truly some excellent products out there sold as "gaming headsets." Are they worth the price, and for what applications they are well suited? That is a debate all its own, the answer to which varies from person to person.
For example I can buy the HD448s for 49 euros where I live.
Well, the problem is that the "truly excellent gaming headsets" are a couple of hundred $, which isn't just chip money.
For gaming I use a Siberia which I bought from Icemat website for 50€ and I use others for music. The reason is that this gives me the best in every case and I don't have to worry about breaking an expensive headphone in the heat of a battle. Also I'm not plugging unplugging plugging unplugging all the time which is not good for the sound card.
On another note my hd555s work great for gaming so do my hd 280s.
The sound quality of a headsets is almost always below that of a decent set of headphones. A set of headphones with good sound stage qualities will almost always be good for gaming. A 7H costs $129 whereas the better sounding and better isolating Audio-technica A700s cost $110 incl. shipping. For $20 you can get a pretty damn good desk microphone or a slightly worse performing clip-on.
Same goes for Sennheisers PC350s sure they sound alright but they need to be modded to sound really good. You could instead just buy a set of Sennheiser HD555/595/558/598s and get way better sound quality.
Noise attenuation qualities of well designed closed headphones is just as good if not better than that of the PC350s or similar design.
The only reason why the manufacturers can get away with such a high price premium on headsets is because the everyday gamer relies on the name of the manufacturer and their gaming brand to give him the best possible "tweaked" solution.
Most headsets have an elevated level of treble because some place clues in games are quite high frequency. This can also be achieved with a sound card running a different EQ than normal. The most important things are imaging capability and the level of midrange detail when choosing a headset or headphones for gaming
My best advice: try some different headsets/headphones before you decide what to buy.