Tuesday, May 10, 2005
New headphones
My new headphones arrived today, the LTB USB 5.1 ones I ordered last week.
So far it's been a mixed experience. They have amazing audio quality for regular stereo usage, but I bought the things purely because they have surroundsound support, and so far that isn't working properly. Anything played through the rear channels comes out super tinny and distorted, as if the low (and possibly mid) frequencies have been stripped out.
It's really obvious that this is NOT how they're supposed to sound, so for now I'm contacting tech support to see if it's a known problem. Maybe there is a bug in the drivers that shipped on the CD or something, and they can fix it through software. Or maybe I just need to RMA the headphones, an annoyance, but not the end of the world.
The surround still works, it just sounds broken. But trying it out in-game in Counter-Strike: Source, you really can tell things are behind you. I really hope I get the surround working, because I really like the headphones other than this.
I think I'm going to see if they've responded to my email by sometime tommorow, and then give them a call to try to get my issue bumped up the queue.
Here's a pic, in case you're wondering what I'm talking about:
Each earpiece has three speakers in it, one 40mm driver as the front and subwoofer, and two 15mm drivers, one as the center and one as the back. I know this means that the surround will never sound as good as the front, but it should still sound as good as the center channel, which is WAY better than the rear.
So far it's been a mixed experience. They have amazing audio quality for regular stereo usage, but I bought the things purely because they have surroundsound support, and so far that isn't working properly. Anything played through the rear channels comes out super tinny and distorted, as if the low (and possibly mid) frequencies have been stripped out.
It's really obvious that this is NOT how they're supposed to sound, so for now I'm contacting tech support to see if it's a known problem. Maybe there is a bug in the drivers that shipped on the CD or something, and they can fix it through software. Or maybe I just need to RMA the headphones, an annoyance, but not the end of the world.
The surround still works, it just sounds broken. But trying it out in-game in Counter-Strike: Source, you really can tell things are behind you. I really hope I get the surround working, because I really like the headphones other than this.
I think I'm going to see if they've responded to my email by sometime tommorow, and then give them a call to try to get my issue bumped up the queue.
Here's a pic, in case you're wondering what I'm talking about:
Each earpiece has three speakers in it, one 40mm driver as the front and subwoofer, and two 15mm drivers, one as the center and one as the back. I know this means that the surround will never sound as good as the front, but it should still sound as good as the center channel, which is WAY better than the rear.
