ADATA EMIX H30 Headset

As far as gaming headsets go, the ADATA EMIX H30 comes with all the bells and whistles you might expect from such a device. It's an analogue, closed-back gaming headset equipped with two separate audio jacks (microphone input and sound output), as well as an additional USB plug. You're probably guessing rightly so that the latter is used to power red LEDs built into both ear cups. If the headset looks sort of familiar to you, you're not imagining things - it's obviously based on the same OEM design we saw on the Rosewill Nebula GX50 a couple of months ago.

Closer Examination, Build Quality and Comfort

The outer headband, the one that connects the left and right ear cups, is made out of metal. There's also a secondary, inner headband, suspended on a couple of wires. Its inner side is covered with soft cushions that are filled with memory foam. Thanks to that and the dual-headband design in general, the EMIX H30 feels comfortable even after sitting on top of your head for several hours. The practicality of the dual-headband design is excellent as well - you never have to adjust anything. Using the headset comes down to popping it on your head and firing up a game or piece of music.


The ear cushions are huge. They have a diameter of 10 centimeters, with the inner diameter being 6 centimeters, which is more than enough to completely surround your ears. They're covered in pleather and supposedly filled with memory foam. I have to say the filling feels like regular foam to me as it immediately springs back to its original form after being depressed with my fingers. Regardless, the ear cushions are fairly soft and don't cause any discomfort over prolonged periods of use.


The ear cups seem perforated, and they are, but you don't have to worry about the sound leaking out since the speaker drivers are completely sealed. The perforations are there to display the built-in red lighting system in all its glory. If you, like me, don't see the point of glowing LEDs on something you can't see while using it, the solution is simple: don't plug in the USB connector the EMIX H30 uses to power the LEDs. There are no drawbacks to doing so as the headset will work normally even so.


The bendy microphone has to be plugged into the appropriate hole on the left ear cup. The necessity of it being detachable eludes me since the EMIX H30 is by no means a portable headset, so why would I ever want to remove its microphone? The head of the microphone has a built-in red LED. At first I thought it's there to notify you of the microphone being muted, which can certainly be useful. As it turns out, it simply keeps glowing at all times. Thankfully, it's placed in a way which makes its red glow no distraction while using the headset, although I did see its reflection in my monitor during loading screens or when playing darker games. How to turn it off? The same way you turn off the LEDs built into the ear cups - don't plug in the USB connector.


As I already mentioned, the braided black and red cable terminates in a pair of audio plugs (microphone input and sound output) and a USB plug. Using the USB plug is entirely optional. If you don't, you simply won't have the red LEDs built into the ear cups and head of the microphone turn on. Them being off is going to be their preferred state for many users anyway. It should be noted that the EMIX H30 doesn't have its own volume controls or a microphone mute button. ADATA obviously doesn't want you to use it without the SOLOX F30 sound card, which contains both of those functions and many others.

Audio Performance

The overall sound performance of the EMIX H30 is decent, especially if you like bassy headphones. The bass extends pretty low without being too sluggish and has a fair amount of punchiness. You already know what that means for gaming - loud explosions, exciting gunfire, grandiose car crashes, and everything in between. The soundstage isn't very wide, but the EMIX H30 still does a solid job in terms of spatial positioning. Some finer details are definitely lost on account of the bass digging into the mid-range.

For music listening, the bass is definitely overdone for my taste. The low-end sticks too much; it really is as simple as that. This is especially obvious in guitar-driven songs and genres since the bass line constantly ends up being too pronounced and distracting when it should actually seamlessly blend in with the melody. The EMIX H30 does a solid job of interpreting higher frequencies - they are clean and non-fatiguing. As far as listening to music goes, the EMIX H30 works best with rap, EDM, and other genres where it's all about the bass. If your playlists consist of a lot of deadmau5, Post Malone, and similar artists, there's a strong possibility the EMIX H30 will sound exactly like you'd want it to.

Unfortunately, there's a problem. Everything mentioned above is true only if we're talking about the raw, unmodified sound of the EMIX H30, only if you plug it into a "neutral" sound card, such as the Sennheiser GSX 1000, Creative Sound Blaster E1, or whatever is integrated on your motherboard. When connected to the sound card it's supplied with (SOLOX F30), the EMIX H30 is a different beast, and not in a good way. The SOLOX F30 doesn't include a neutral equalizer preset, and none of the available presets make the EMIX H30 sound nearly as good as it can sound when it's connected to pretty much any other sound card. We'll cover the issue in greater detail on the next page of this review.

The 7.1 surround sound offered by the SOLOX F30 sound card is achieved by using the Cmedia's Xear Surround technology, the very same we recently saw on a couple of Cougar's gaming headsets. If you read their reviews, there's nothing new I can tell you - the surround effect isn't very good. I can basically reiterate what I wrote in my Cougar Immersa Pro review: instead of getting a better sense of space and having the sound come from outside the headphones, everything gets placed roughly a couple of centimeters above your ears. That includes sounds that definitely shouldn't be there, such as gunfire that originates from directly in front of you. The clarity and dynamics of the sound are also completely changed, and not for the better. For example, cars in PUBG are quieter than usual, and firing your own gun pierces through and into your ears to such an extent that the whole experience becomes very uncomfortable.

Microphone Performance

The detachable microphone of the ADATA EMIX H30 was tested by connecting it to the supplied SOLOX F30 sound card. Its microphone input is very loud, which is why I recorded the samples (and actively used the headset) with microphone gain set to 80%.

To review the microphone's sound and compare it to other similar headsets, I used the Adam A7X speakers and Shure SRH840 headphones, both being studio monitors, connected to Audiolab's M-DAC, a high-quality digital-to-analog converter that functions as an external sound card when connected to a PC. Testing was done in Discord, TeamSpeak, Skype, and Audacity, and I also used Audacity to record sound from the microphones.

For reference, this voice recording has been made with the Rode NT-USB, a high-quality studio microphone:



This is the sample recorded by using the microphone the ADATA EMIX H30 comes with:



As you can surely hear, the microphone sounds terrific. My voice is warm, detailed, natural and with plenty of depth. That's pretty much the best you can hope for but rarely get when buying a gaming headset. I have to admit I didn't expect the microphone to be nearly as good. The moment I realized ADATA is on to something was when I first started talking on Discord only to have my teammates ask if I switched to one of the Sennheiser headsets, which are known for their exceptional microphone quality. Take a listen of some of their samples to see just how good the microphone of the ADATA EMIX H30 actually is:




Even though the Game One still remains the king of gaming headsets in terms of microphone quality, the EMIX H30 really isn't far behind. Great job on the microphone front, ADATA!