About me:
22 years experience as a PC technician, I currently have more Lenovo, Dell, HP certifications than I can count.
I have worked for major ISP's as a network technician, Dell support, HP support and Compaq support as both a consumer and commercial support technician; the government of Canada as a deskside technician, Alstom Corp. as deskside tech, Veritaq as deskside tech, and finally a national worldwide financial institution is my current position as a deskside tech.
I also have 9 years experience as a contractor working in mostly major financial institutions doing deployments, IMACs and service calls of/for new servers, routers, switches, UPS, LAN printers, desktops, check machines, pin-pads etc,etc,etc - the same contract position seen me inside Canadian Tires, CT Gas bars, and other retail stores doing the same thing, setting up srv racks, routers, switch's, UPS devices, cell card backups, LAN printers, pin-pads and POS systems.
I run my own commercial quality firewall at home (PFSense). I (my wife and two sons) have over 30 devices in my home and everything is segregated with subnets/vlans as it should be. I am also a Linux junkie because well, Winblows sucks and is only good for gaming.
I say all this not to blow my own horn but, because I want everyone who read this to understand I am NOT some non-technical noobie complaining about an otherwise great headset.
I have the exact same problem since the last firmware update. Are we sure this is not by design to prompt users to upgrade their headset. Mine is about 3-4 years old and the industry seems to be pushing people to upgrade every 3-4 years.
This started the minute I rebooted by system after a recent firmware update so, that being said, I won't be purchasing Steel Series anymore.
As consumers we cannot reward this behaviour.
Either the firmware did it OR Steel Series is not worried about it and are not going to fix it, either way this is bad from my point of view as a consumer.
I have owned Razor Krakens (the first release years ago) , Alienware, Steel Series and Creative Labs (Sound Blaster X H7 Tournaments) and others.
The Blaster x H7 tournament was arguably the bets of the lot with true 7.1 sound without software-yes it had multiple tiny speakers in each ear to create true 7.1 sound, THAT combined with the software made it one awesome headset. The pads however, wore out after 2 years and I could not purchase more so I got this steel series.
The steel series has GREAT sound but I cannot keep using it if it is going to go to sleep in the middle of playing a game or watching a movie. This movie I am watching right now is only 1/2 way over and it has already gone to sleep 3 times.
I am an older guy and my memory is not what it used to be so I cannot remember to turn it off every time I am done on the PC - twice now I had had my battery run out because I do not remember to turn it off-so re-enabled sleep until I can purchase another Blaster headset-this time I'll grab enough ear pads to keep it going for 10 years (ffs).
My son wears by these steel series, I bought them on his recommendation, I won't buy them again. Fool me once and all that.
UNLESS Steep series comes out with a fixed between now and when I purchase new headset in the new year.