Gaming

Thief

The in game character dialog is crisp and clear, while blending perfectly with the left and right channels. The directional cues and effects are incredibly immersive, offering a sense of space and causing me to jump on one or two occasions.

We used level 5 to test bass response, during the level when the primal generator fired up the whole desk started vibrating while maintaining clean bass effect.  Controlling that generator while the subwoofer was roaring made for a very immersive level....desk shaking, walls vibrating...chest pounding -Did I mention I play games at high volumes for testing? In game musical aspects of the game sounded very real and convincing enveloping the player.

Battlefield 4

We decided to go with a FPS to test directional audio, during our testing levels, Character and NPC dialog was clean, explosions produced expansive effects without bottoming out the subwoofer or washing out the bass effect.  Enemy locations can be pin-pointed in the surround sound stage.  In game action during intense battle scenes was very impressive and heart pounding.  The STX II produced and excellent immersive audio reproduction and we found lost in the game play for longer than we should have been.

Notes on game testing: What we do when we test for gaming is just listening to the overall quality and looking for issues and anomalies with the reproduction.  The Essence STX II, kept pace with any game we played for testing and produced excellent gaming audio with no problems to note. We used the card during all game play for the last few weeks prior to in depth testing and noticed no issues with any audio reproduction.