Altec Lansing AHS602 Gaming Headset

Reviews: Multimedia

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Bradford Day
Kurtis
Altec Lansing
Sep. 28, 2004

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Testing

Games

Obviously I couldn't wait to tear into the straightforwardly designed and decorated bubble pack and get to gaming with these beauties. I still harbor a love of the good ole first person shooter genre, and Soldier of Fortune 2 is at the top of my lust list. I was immediately impressed with the overall machine gun goodness and satisfying thump of bass accompanying heavy explosions...then I flipped the surround effect switch. Now gunshots were simply delicious, explosions a symphony of rich bass and crystal clear mids. The surround effect is definitely a dramatic enhancement. However, once I got past the exploding happiness, I noticed a problem...footsteps. I had a hell of a time figuring out where my opponents were coming from. The directional aspect of the stereo sound that is a mainstay of any fragger's repertoire was drastically altered in surround mode, almost overly enhanced. Luckily the level of surround effect can be fine-tuned with the adjustable wheel. For games where directional sound is key, less surround effect equates to less confusion. I found the same directional problem held true while playing DOOM III as well. Knocking the surround effect setting down to about half way stabilizes the directional sound while retaining the sound enhancement.

But not all games were hindered in this manner. Battlefield: Vietnam clearly and radically benefited from the full surround effect. I didn't think the soothing sound of a Huey Gunship could get any sweeter. From what I could decipher, the surround effect boosts bass and treble response and slightly echoes the mid range, essentially mimicking a multi-channel speaker system. Obviously with only 2 sound sources to work with, this is a difficult task. And, as BF:V is more or less an outdoor arena, close quarter footsteps are hardly relevant. Large, heavily armed machines of destruction, however, define relevance in this game. Tanks, jeeps, aircraft all receive an audio makeover in full-blown surround mode. Colin McRae Rally 2004 also benefits from the surround mode to create a completely immersive experience. You can play the game with the surround effect turned off, but it's like drinking non-alcoholic beer; the basic idea is accomplished, but so much goodness is blatantly absent. Rattling doors, whining engines and screaming exhausts sound muted and vacant with the surround option switched off. Turn on the effects and it's as though you're ripping through the hills of Finland in your very own Peugeot.

I think the one truly fantastic feature of the surround effect is the fact that it can be tuned to suit each gaming situation. I found cranking the surround full blast in racing and flying games really added a sense of realism and enhanced sound characteristics not heard through normal headsets. Yet for all my praise, there is one barb. The multi-function controller is an active device, meaning it requires its own power source, one AAA battery. If you are prone to late night gaming sessions such as I, you will no doubt leave the surround switch on and drain your juice. That said, I did manage to accidentally leave my headset on overnight multiple times but have yet to drain one battery.

Music

To test the musical aptitude of the AHS602s, I pulled up the same list of MP3s I typically use in all of my audio reviews. They are: The Mahones - Drunken Lazy Bastard, The Clancy Brothers - Irish Fiddle Song, Propellorheads - Spybreak from The Matrix soundtrack, The Dust Brothers - Stealing Fat from the Fight Club soundtrack, The Beastie Boys - Alive, Bloodhound Gang - The Bad Touch, The Pogues - Whiskey in the Jar, Gogol Bordello - Sacred Darling, George Clinton and Ice Cube - Bop Gun, Creedence Clearwater Revival - Lookin out My Back Door, Public Enemy - Can't Truss It, Transplants - Tall Cans in the Air, The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army...

If you read closely earlier on, you would have noticed something about 40mm neodymium drivers. What does that mean exactly? Well, without trying to sound too much like I looked this up on Google...cough cough...Neodymium is used to make supermagnets, magnets with very strong attractive properties. What this translates to is a speaker driver that is able to withstand distortion and can recover from powerful bass hits in time to precisely shove that voice coil to and fro' and more accurately reproduce the original recording. Neodymium is good, in other words.

So, as you might have guessed from my little Mr. Wizard digression, these speakers can produce some pretty impressive bass. Every music file I forced through them was rich, clear and bassy. The headset even picked up that ultra deep bass so popular in most Beastie Boys songs, you just normally can't hear it with lesser grade speakers. I also sneaked in a little Primus, just to get a good sense of what distorted bass sounds like. Again, I was not disappointed. And all this clarity was achieved without the aid of the surround feature.

You'll just have to pretend to forget all that glorious gaming gushing I lavished on the surround effect for now because using it with music files really trashes up the tunes...well, 99% of the time. The 3D audio effects just didn't do if for me with any of the songs I listened to, except for "Can't Truss It", that song sounded pretty good in surround for some reason. Enabling the surround effect for music muddies up the mids, slightly distorts tight bass and makes the high range sound like its being played in a concrete bathroom. Luckily you can turn it off...and save your battery.

Movies

For movie testing I used several different DVDs and .avi files. No one format in particular seemed to stand out as sounding better than the other. I tried to choose various scenes that each represented a wide range of sounds. I watched the final sword fight scene from Kill Bill. The disco music soundtrack to that killing spree sounded fantastic with the surround effect disabled and equally as good with it on. What I noticed most was the accentuation of sound effects while using the surround feature. The same held true for car chase sequences from The Matrix: Reloaded and gunfights from Boondock Saints. Subtle nuances in the background sound effects were brought forward and did actually imitate a surround theatre experience in a way. I found no real difference when adjusting the surround effect wheel; turning it didn't enhance or hinder the surround effects noticeably. Dialogue scenes do suffer a bit from a slightly hollow echo effect while in surround mode. As noted above, it depended greatly on the individual scene as to whether or not the active surround feature was a help or hindrance.

Voice Recording

While gaming online and using the Voice over IP chat program Ventrilo, I was 100% pleased with the quality of the microphone. The mic actually has three settings: mute, low and high. Mute obviously cuts the outgoing voice traffic completely while low noticeably dims your voice as transmitted to your recipients. The high setting is full-on mic transmission. My gaming pals could easily distinguish the low setting from the high, telling me I sounded as though I had taken several steps back from my microphone when set to low. I'm not sure of what use this feature is, but if you tend to shout a lot while fragging, your teammates might appreciate it more than I.

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: First Looks
Page 3: Testing
Page 4: Usability & Conclusion

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