Page 7 - Gaming

Gaming

Testing out the Vengeance 1500 and 1100, I enlisted a few games, Portal 2, Dirt 3, and Metro 2033.  The test system is as follows:

• ASUS ROG Vulcan ANC headset
• AKG K701 headphones
• Corsair Vengeance 1500
• Corsair Vengeance 1100
• Audio-gd Sparrow A
• Intel i7-875K@3.6 GHz
• Gigabyte P55a-UD3
• 8GB RAM
• ATI Radeon 6950
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2

Portal 2

First up, lets get to Portal 2.  The first game, Portal, was a classic, spawning meme after meme, and not to mention a fine line of products that you can actually buy.

Portal 2 does everything the first game does, only better in about every way, including sound.  Of the four headphones, the K701 gave the best presentation of space, with the Vulcan ANC and the V1500 tied for second.  The V1100 actually did a good job of presenting environment detail, and the bass gave some nice rumble to the periodic music and environmental sounds.  There's quite a lot of things crashing about in Portal 2.

Intelligibility plays very importantly in Portal 2, because you have to listen to the voices to find out what the next clue is.  The Vengeance 1500 scores very high for voice intelligibility, voices came through loud and clear.  While the Vengeance 1100 is somewhat lacking in intelligibility, I didn't have a lot of issues with the way it sounded.  I would prefer the V1500 over the V1100 though.

DiRT3

I love racing games, especially the Dirt series.  They have just about everything you could want if youre not into hardcore simulation.  Dirt also has some very good sounds, especially engine and gear noise, which are the heart and soul of a car.  Also, thumbs up if youve ever gone to Youtube looking for a song you heard in Dirt.

The Vengeance 1100 provide great bass, which was awesome because Chromeos Dont Turn the Lights On was playing for this particular test period.  However, the Vengeance 1100 are not the most accurate, and they have serious coloration in the midrange which detracts from the overall sound, especially with the female voice used for navigation on rally maps.  Damn good bass, though.

However, the Vengeance 1500 and K701 were super good on Dirt3, I didnt miss anything except apexes and gear shifts.  And a bridge or two.  The big winner is the K701 with just so much detail in the sound, it was great to get wrapped up in the sound and shifting gears, just to hear the lovely sound.

Metro 2033

This gorgeous game has so much to get immersed with, great atmosphere, eye popping graphics, and beautiful sound design.  I feel like Im giving it an award just for all that.  Sound wise it is very impressive.  Though there are some minor quibbles here and there, Metro 2033 uses sound as part of the game itself, part of (or a character itself) the character.  The Vengeance 1500 were very good at drawing you in to the space of the game, into the world.  The crisp sound of the 1500 gave you no illusions about the dark nature of the game.  The K701 also imparted much the same.  The ASUS Vulcan ANC were almost frightening with all of its extra sound dampening.  The Vengeance 1100 have great presence with all the bass, almost like playing in a movie theatre.  I was worried that some of the dialog would be affected by the V1100's treble, but I didnt feel like I was missing too much.   Even though I was let down a little in Dirt 3, dialog in Metro 2033 came through fine as did the environment sounds.

Microphones

I tested the microphones out with a number of applications, Skype and some coop play.  Playing back the sound samples with Audacity, there were some notable differences in the microphone performance for the headsets.

The Vengeance 1500 has a supurb microphone, plenty of gain and very good clarity.  The V1500 also had very low noise and hum, as well as very good noise (echo) cancellation.  The Vengeance 1100 was a little different.  Compared to the V1500, the V1100 was not as clear and had quite a bit of hum and noise, even though it produced the highest sound level overall.  There's nothing worse than having your team tell you they can't hear you because your mic sucks.  Noise (echo) cancellation was very good, and nobody complained about me being too quiet with the Vengeance 1100.  So for the microphone, the Vengeance 1500 is a winner.

So for this little tally of games, the Vengeance 1500 didn't miss anything.  It was great sounding in all the games I threw at it.  The Vengeance 1100 worked surprisingly well for dialog heavy games like Metro 2033 and Portal 2, but didn't give as much for DiRT 3.  Well, there you have it, the Vengeance 1500 is great all around for games.  The Vengeance 1100 might be hit or miss, though, but one thing is certain, the bass will definitely be there.