Audio Performance

I'll split the audio performance analysis into two parts - gaming and music. Even though the headset produces the same sound regardless of what it's being used for, you won't necessarily look for the same things while annihilating your virtual opponents as you will when listening to your favorite tunes.

Gaming

Like many other gaming headsets available on the market today, the Cougar Immersa has been tuned to put a strong emphasis on the bass. The bass is absolutely massive. You'll get a deep rumble, the one that makes you feel the explosions in your stomach. Surprisingly, you'll also get a fair amount of punchiness. When you combine the two, you get a really exciting sound presentation in your favorite games, especially if you're mostly into action titles. I honestly can't remember when I had this much fun listening to virtual gunfire, explosions, and overall carnage. During my Battlefield 1 and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds multiplayer sessions, I caught myself picking up weapons I don't normally use just because of how much I liked the way the Immersa interpreted their sound.

The spatial positioning is solid. I wouldn't call it eSports-grade, but you'll certainly be able to get a decent idea of the location and distance of your enemies. I don't have any real complaints here, especially considering the $50 price of the Immersa.

My teammates over Discord were perfectly understandable at all times. However, I did have some slight issues with dialogue in movies and games that contain a lot of it. If the voice of the person speaking is a bit deeper, or tuned to be that way, it becomes boomy and somewhat annoying to the ear. When I had a situation like that, I was able to sort it out with an equalizer, by reducing the upper bass region and slightly tuning the lower midrange. If your ears are less sensitive to excessive bass than mine are, it's quite possible you won't feel the need to do the same.

As this is a closed-back headset, it's worth mentioning that the passive noise isolation is very good. Only when gaming at extreme volumes is there a chance someone sitting close to you might hear some muffled sounds coming from your direction.

Music

When I'm starting on a new headset, I usually play a random song on Spotify right after plugging it in, just to see if it works, and then immediately dive into multiplayer gaming. That didn't happen with the Immersa, though. After the first "test" song, I played another. And then another. And another. I ended up going through my playlists for a couple hours before firing up the first game. Not because the Immersa offers unbelievable audiophile sound quality or fantastically natural audio presentation. If anything, it does the opposite. It tries to be as fun to listen to as possible and pulls it off quite successfully.

If I wanted to get analytical, I'd say that the midrange is a bit of a mess, clearly lacking in terms of detail and clarity. The highs are surprisingly solid, but most of the fun comes from the way the bass is tuned. Its deep growl, punchiness, and sheer magnitude come together to make anything bass-heavier sound exciting, lively.

If your playlists mostly consist of indie folk or classical music, you won't find much pleasure in these. Then again, you definitely shouldn't be buying a $50 gaming headset if listening to such music. On the other hand, genres like rap, EDM or even some variants of heavy metal - basically anything where it isn't a problem if the bass gets in the way of subtle details - are a joy to listen to. Well, as long as the naturality and accuracy of the sound aren't things you're mainly looking for.

As per usual, I connected the Cougar Immersa to a couple external DACs with headphone amplifiers - namely, the FiiO X5, Optoma NuForce µDAC3, and Cambridge Audio DacMagic XS V2. They did improve some aspects of the sound to a certain extent, but I was left with the impression that the Immersa's sound signature is so colored and dominant that there's nothing you can combine it with to drastically change it. That being said, I wouldn't bother pairing it with an external DAC if you don't already own one - it works perfectly well when connected to the motherboard.