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  • jimjamjamie - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    So is this an advert or..?
  • Stuka87 - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    Pretty much every product a site like AnandTech reviews is given to them by the company that makes the product, but it doesn't read like an advertisement. It reads like a review that describes the product.
  • Dr. Swag - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    This doesn't feel like a review, but an announcement article, hands on, or advert.
  • jordanclock - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    I mean, it goes over the features, critiques them and then presents an opinion on the product. Sounds like a review to me.
  • jordanclock - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    But I will admit that this review doesn't seem very comprehensive. It's a lot of subjective assessment and the only objective measurement comes from the vendor.
  • Samus - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    I fail to see a real improvement over the Siberia 800. In fact, some aspects feel like a downgrade, particularly the lack of user replaceable\swappable batteries.

    One of the main selling points of the Steelseries H (which I own, predated the Siberia but is the same thing) was that it included two batteries and the base could charge one while the other was in use.
  • Samus - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    Ahh, after actually reading the review and not just the first page, I see the Arctis Wireless does include two batteries and resembles the Siberia 800. I don't really see a difference other than the subjectively different driver tuning...
  • Brett Howse - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    Always read past the first page!

    These are a replacement for the Siberia 800 and offer better drivers. Siberia was 20-20Khz these are 10-40Khz. Plus the updated band from the Arctis lineup.
  • we - Thursday, March 15, 2018 - link

    One thing irritated me somewhat while reading was that you seem to be giving the impression that headset frequency response is the primary indicator of headset sound quality, which is somewhat misleading. You can have two headphones, both with an excellent and just about identical frequency response, that sound very different, and one may even sound downright awful. A headphone with a mediocre frequency response may even sound better than one with an "ideal" on-paper frequency response. There are various reasons for this. One is that companies don't necessarily measure frequency response in the same way. Another is diaphragm linearity and break up. A cheap diaphragm may have excellent frequency response measured with a simple sine-wave sweep. But if it has to concurrently deal with strong bass tones and high frequency harmonics, the bass tones may push the the diaphragm outside of its most linear and most stable operating range, and as a result the HF tones may audibly suffer. You can't detect this kind of behaviour with typical frequency response measurments. Things like intermodulation distortion, driver linearity and break-up, damping and resonance characteristics of the transducer, its components and its housing can seriously influence subjective sound quality. Of course everything else being equal, the headphone with the better frequency response will outperform the one with a poorer frequency response. (I am not saying there is anything wrong with the headset tested. It may well be excellent, and apparently much thought has been invested in attaining high quality sound. In all probability, the designers know very well that a decent frequency response should be a given at this price point, and is only one of many aspects of design that have to be carefully considered to create a good headset)
  • Brett Howse - Saturday, March 17, 2018 - link

    It's not just frequency response, but that's a bit factor on these if you look at the graph. These don't have the boominess you'd see in some headsets where the bass response peaks at 60-100Hz and falls off drastically from there.
  • halcyon - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    Sorry, but it totally reads like an advertisement. Just regurgitating basic marketing material.

    Real headphone reviews, read head-fi, innerfidelity, many other sites.

    And the proof-reading:

    "back design, when is amazing for isolation,"

    Sure. I wonder if the writers get paid for just producing characters.
  • Dribble - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    It's an advert imo. It sings the praises of a usb dac like its some sort of revelation, and not the way that most surround sound gaming headsets have been made for years.
  • halcyon - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    Also, the review states:

    " pretty easy to say that the Arctis Pro is one of the best gaming headsets on the market."

    I doubt the reviewer has EVER tried even 1/10th of the gaming headsets on the market.

    No, THIS is a proper Gaming Headset review:

    https://pclab.pl/art77039-16.html
  • Samus - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    The Steelseries Siberia is in an entirely different league than what Asus and Kingston make. Which is why the review you link too didn't even review the Siberia. For the last 4 years, the Steelseries H-series has been the benchmark to beat for gaming headphones and nobody has seemingly even tried to compete with them. Sure, the breakout boxes with OLED displays could be considered gimmicks, if they actually were gimmicks. But they are useful. Every feature in the package is useful.
  • Brett Howse - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    Not an advertisement. Of course other devices have DACs. Every audio device that hooks to a PC has a DAC.

    The THD+N on this GameDAC is fantastic. It has a quality amplifier built-in. It offers features that you'd not get with a normal headset.

    It doesn't need ANY software installed on your PC to use it or configure it. Some companies have software that's required, and that also requires a login. And it updates every day and asks for a restart. This doesn't need any of that for the full functionality.

    Not an advertisement. Just a good product.
  • Brett Howse - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    So no, this isn't an advertisement. This is a new product, and we were able to try out the product and provide our experience with them.

    Originally this was going to be just a news piece for the launch, but SteelSeries got us the product several weeks ago which gave a chance to actually use them for more than the 5 minutes you'd see in a hands-on.

    Just like any other product review I've done, I've used it, tested it, and provided explanations as to where I think the product excels, and where I think improvements should be made. We don't have all of the test equipment for full testing on headphones, but maybe that's something we'd look at doing in the future. Maybe not with the response this set of headphones received. If you look around, no one else even bothered to show the frequency response.

    I've been looking for a set of headphones with almost all of what the Arctis Pro has to offer for some time. This lineup solves actual pain points I've had with other products. They are, in fact, very good.

    Have I used every set of headphones ever? Of course not. But I've probably used several dozen.

    I like quality audio. I'm not an audiophile, and I wouldn't want to be labeled as one, but if I'm looking for a set of headphones, I'd be looking for clarity, tight bass, and of course comfort, and this lineup offers all of that.

    Not an advertisement. Just an experience with a product that lives up to what we were promised when discussing it with the company, and that's not always the case.
  • Kerdal - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    Hi Brett, I was wondering something. Have you tried the Sennheiser Game One (open back) or the older PC360? I have a few of each but I'm always on the lookout for an upgrade.

    I'm wondering how these compare to the Sennheiser in terms of sound quality.

    My motherboard is the ASUS ROG Maximus IX Code with the Sabre ES9023P and TI RC4850 amp so the gameDAC isn't all that necessary in my case.

    Thanks in advance.
  • Brett Howse - Saturday, March 17, 2018 - link

    My headset of choice is the Sennheiser HD 598 SR open back headphones. The Arctis lineup has an advantage over those though with offering better DACs so I don't have to worry about where I'm plugging in the Sennheisers.

    In terms of sound quality, compared to my HD 598 SRs, I would say the Arctis Pro is ahead, but the 598s are a bit more comfortable. I prefer open back though since it works better in my environment.
  • halcyon - Wednesday, March 14, 2018 - link

    Brett, my advice, for what it is worth:
    1. Compare to something. Give a reference. Saying "The best" is useless, unless we know what your "best" earlier was.
    2. Please try to do some semi-objective analysis of the different parts of what are the key points for a gaming headset: sound quality, sound fatigue during long term gaming sessions, wearing erconomics (headband tightness, crushing on ears, sweating), positional accuracy (using built-in 3D headphone virtualization AND/OR using the game's built-in like in Overwatch, again give us a comparison reference), microphone quality (it takes less than 5mins to fire up a recorder, record 15secs of speech, save it as 128kbps mp3, tag it into the review html).

    Yes, we know you liked them, but you were mostly going ooh-aaah, about the "feature" that are basically marketing material.

    We want to know how it performs. Compared to something else good.

    That's why reviews are done, imho.
  • Brett Howse - Saturday, March 17, 2018 - link

    This was going to be a first toe in the water for headphones, to get some more objective data for the future, but it might be the last.
    Your point 2 - I went over all those points except positional accuracy.
  • aleny2k - Wednesday, March 28, 2018 - link

    This is an un-sponsored comment made by my own personal opinion, and speaking on behalf of many people out there who just read this article/hands-on/review, benefited from it, but kept silent or does not give any feedback: I really do enjoy reading through this article and I do learned a lot of information that was not given directly by the manufacturer (and information which cant be found on other websites). Although I must say I was actually hoping there would be more comprehensive content and in-depth review, but since this article never did set out to be a review nor hands-on in the first place, all is forgiven. Please keep up the good work and hopefully, this will not be the last time you dip your toe in the water for headphones.
  • blackmagnum - Thursday, March 15, 2018 - link

    Check techpowerup for a second opinion on the same product.
  • Dr. Swag - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    Is this sponsored? Because it sure feels like it but it doesn't say so...
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, March 13, 2018 - link

    No, it's not.

    Brett is a closest audio enthusiast and wanted to try out some headphones. That's all.=)
  • JDBeast - Thursday, March 15, 2018 - link

    Almost lost me at the very beginning...

    "the GameDAC, which is a USB DAC (Digital Audio Converter)"

    DAC is Digital-to-ANALOGUE Converter, it's not just used for audio, though that is most common.

    Luckily I checked later in the article and it looks like this was a first draft error, as it is correctly explained in the GameDAC section.
  • JDBeast - Thursday, March 15, 2018 - link

    Also I would be curious to know if they have address the screen burn issues with their oled displays. I have the Steelseries Wireless N with basically the same breakout box and it has bad screen burn after a couple of years use. It doesn't affect performance in anyway (of course) but it looks bad and has ruined the resale value of my headset.
  • Brett Howse - Saturday, March 17, 2018 - link

    DAC can be referred to as either, but I prefer the original Digital to Analog Converter. I had been reading some press material which referred to it as Audio Converter which made me type that - I fixed it now.
  • halcyon - Friday, March 23, 2018 - link

    For those who are wondering... The GameDac is a 2 channel soundcard for Windows.

    This means it can NOT do proper mutichannel to 3D sound virtualization as ir is being fed only stereo signal.

    It will not be able to do proper front to back identification of sounds in 3D games, unlike DTS Headphone (Asus), Creative Sound Blaster 5.1/7.1 cards or Sennheiser GX1000 series.

    All it can do is some pseudo room feel with echo/reverb/phase.

    i.e. not a true, high end, 3D sound card.

    The article should make this very clear.

    TechPowerUp review author rates GameDAC below all modern multichannel 3D virtualization sound carda foe gaming directional cues.

    Thats what matters in 3D and FPS games.
  • aleny2k - Wednesday, March 28, 2018 - link

    Hi Brett, thank you for the informative hands-on of this product, information which was not provided by their official website or other sites for that matter. I enjoyed it very much. I do have a question about the Arctis Pro Wireless. You did mention that it can be used wired through the gameDAC as well. My question is, do you get exactly the same audio quality (and hi-res Audio) that you get from Arctis Pro+GameDAC, when you wire your Arctis Pro Wireless to the GameDAC? Steelseries is claiming they are using the same speaker and driver for all their Arctis Pro models. Just that because the wireless variant is wireless, it has more noise and distortion and could not achieve the same high audio fidelity as the wired edition (even though SS claimed that wireless can produce lossless audio), mainly because wireless signal is compromised (compressed and distorted) as well as the built-in DAC found INSIDE the Arctis Pro wireless simply isnt ESS Sabre 9018. Technically, when using the wireless headset through the 3.5mm analog wire, it bypasses the built-in DAC found inside the headset, thus emitting the native audio signal from the source without being tampered by the DAC. But since I dont have the headset to test with, I was wondering if you have some answers for this question. I do have a separate DAC and also a couple of audio devices that are capable of producing lossless, hi-res audio. So I was wondering if the Arctis Pro wireless can behave EXACTLY like the Arctis Pro+GameDAC when being used wired. thank you!!
  • Brett Howse - Sunday, April 1, 2018 - link

    The Wireless model has the exact same drivers, and the same connectors as well, so you can just plug it in as if it was the wired model and it does bypass the built-in DAC. You can run it without turning on the battery powered circuitry so it sounds just like the wired model when hooked to the DAC.

    You can also use a 3.5 mm if you want to do the same thing.
  • aleny2k - Sunday, April 1, 2018 - link

    Thank you, Brett! That is exactly the information I was looking for. Keep rocking with more hands on and reviews of headphones / headsets in future!
  • safari browser - Friday, March 30, 2018 - link

    My headset of choice is the Sennheiser HD 598 SR open back headphones https://babasupport.org/browser/safari-customer-se...

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