Look, feel and wearing comfort
Let’s move on to the unboxing. The headset comes in white and black, and for convenience in taking photos, I chose the heavily dark pigmented version. It makes the cut-out process much easier. Otherwise, the mix of materials is straightforward. Black plastic surfaces as far as the eye can see – nicely padded with PU-coated foam. I have no idea how many softeners have to live out their lives there and how durable it is. But it does make for a simple, timeless appearance, even if the feel doesn’t reach the 100 euros.
Back to the cushions. The headband has been thickly planked, that’s fine as it is. However, those with little or no hair will sorely miss a textile cover. After 30 to 60 minutes, it sticks to your head like old chewing gum, depending on your temperament and outside temperatures. They could have easily countered this with clever perforation and more durable material. But they didn’t – closed event. But it sits softly and does not press, at least.
The hinge mechanism is also ok. Adjusting the length is not particularly tactile, so there is still room for improvement. The ear pads (which I’ll get to later) are so thick and soft that they take over the function of one of the necessary hinge axes in terms of lateral adjustment. This may seem clever and also sit comfortably, but distorts the sound catastrophically with a bit of bad luck. This headset will thus sound different on every head. The fork’s pickups in the ear cups rely on simple ABS. Such a thing is definitely not durable. More about that in a moment in the teardown.
Connectivity and USB dongle
Both sides of the headset are equipped with jacks that can’t be confused. The audio input relies on a normal, 4-pin TRSS jack, while the microphone input relies on a 3.5 mm jack with a lug for better guidance. So theoretically you can replace the TRSS cable with something of your own, but you don’t need to. The cable itself is long, soft and flexible enough. The textile jacket is good and the lack of stiffness also avoids ugly structure-borne noise.
The control integrated in the cable is ok, but I don’t like something like that at all in this price range. The easy-grip mute button makes sense, as does the rear clip for attaching to outerwear. However, the volume potentiometer lacks synchronization and is also a potential can-break point. Strain relief and cable feed-through are okay.
The USB sound solution is a bit tricky and without it, the headset would be a complete loser. I’ll show you how the mediocre frequency response is improved with DSP and how the silly certificate is fulfilled. At least you can get the headset quite loud with it, with the HiFiMAN EF 400, the Beyerdynamic A20 and the Soundblaster AE-9 I had to work with high gain to even reach a kind of full scale.
However, if you connect another headset to this solution, the high-frequency whip almost makes your ears ring. If you can still hear these ranges. For me, it stops at around 14 KHz due to age, but I can still hear that there is more than there should be.
Microphone
The pluggable small gooseneck microphone has a low and a high cut, which is also caused by the internally low sampling rate. However, this is acceptable and even sensitive enough for the application purpose. You can hear a very slight hiss, but that does not bother at all in everyday use. So you can live with the microphone. And by only providing a smaller sound opening in the arm, you have a kind of directionality, even if the capsule is only unidirectional.
20 Antworten
Kommentar
Lade neue Kommentare
Urgestein
Urgestein
Urgestein
Urgestein
Moderator
Mitglied
Urgestein
Urgestein
Urgestein
Mitglied
Mitglied
Urgestein
Urgestein
Veteran
Urgestein
Urgestein
Urgestein
Urgestein
Mitglied
Alle Kommentare lesen unter igor´sLAB Community →