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

It being a $20 gaming headset, it should come as no surprise that the Rosewill Nebula GX10 can't offer the precision you may expect (and get) from a more expensive model. In terms of spatial positioning, it does a decent job of informing you of enemies that are afoot and closing in on your position, but you won't be able to pinpoint their exact locations and figure out their movement patterns on sound alone. Then again, no other headset of this price will offer you that. If I bought a $20 gaming headset, I'd be quite happy to just get a general sense of what's happening around me.

The bass is quite bloated, so the explosions sound fun. It isn't too boomy, so if the characters in your favorite RPGs or adventure games have deep voices, they won't be annoying to listen to. The mids and highs generally have enough presence and a fair amount of clarity as long as there's not too much bass present, as it will otherwise spill outside of its frequency spectrum and make the finer details hard to hear and make sense of.

The passive noise isolation is good, so you don't have to worry about any sound leaking out and into your surroundings. Even though the metal mesh makes it seem like the ear cups are perforated, this is a completely closed-back headset.

Gaming-performance-wise, the acoustic presentation of the Nebula GX10 has its flaws, although its price makes it very hard to ask for more than it offers. If $20 is as high as your budget can go, you should be quite satisfied by the sound of this headset. It would be easy for me to say that you should stretch it by another $17 and get the Rosewill Nebula GX30, but I have to keep in mind that that's a price increase of almost 100% and, as such, not something you'll be prepared for if considering a $20 headset.

Music

While I can't say that the Nebula GX10 is generally worse than the $37 Nebula GX30 in terms of gaming performance, things do change when we switch to music listening. Here, the bloated, muddy bass of the Nebula GX10 makes bass-heavy songs sound somewhat unpleasant as a lot of details get lost due to the bass spilling into the midrange. The soundstage is quite narrow, so you'll be left with a feeling of being boxed in. I also couldn't get rid of the feeling that the built-in speakers aren't equally distanced from my ears, or that the left one produced more bass than the right one. After switching to songs with less of a focus on bass, those focusing more on the mids and highs, that feeling went away, which had the Nebula GX10 actually sound better than I'd ever expect from a $20 gaming headset.

The sound doesn't distort at any volume level, so you're free to use the full available range of the built-in volume dial. As for combining the Nebula GX10 with external DACs or dedicated sound cards, there's practically no point in even discussing it - if you're buying a $20 gaming headset, you more than likely won't like the idea of spending $50-$100 on an external device you will plug it into. Just use it with your integrated sound card regardless of which codec it uses and don't bother upgrading your audio system unless you also plan to get a more expensive gaming headset when you do.