Sennheiser HD 500 Fusion Stereo Headphones Review - The Video Game Test
(Page 5 of 6 )
The final test was one in which the headset, beingbass-heavy and of closed-ear design, seemed to be made for: the Video Gametest. I tested the set with both QuakeIII: Team Arena and Unreal Tournament2003 (UT2K3), both being sound-intensive games which rely heavily uponenvironment-based sound and sound localization techniques.
I started with QuakeIII: Team Arena (Q3TA). I madesure that the sound was at the game's best quality, 22kHz, as well as makingsure that all sound effects, such as Doppler, were on. Given my experienceswith the previous tests, I was hoping to attain some sort of strategicadvantage over using my native Dell speakers. Unfortunately, this wasn't thecase. What I got, however, was an intense gaming sound experience, outside ofthe game's already murderous intensity. I was able to detect the localizationof the sound which, when wearing them backwards, offered me absolutely nobenefit whatsoever. After putting the headphones on correctly, the sound wasjust as intense, and the strategic benefit just as negligible. At least thesound was clear.
Next, I fired up UT2K3.I went into the sound options and changed the Audio Mode from “Software 3D” to“Hardware 3D Audio + EAX.” This game offers a more refined sound than Q3TA, which is extremely bass intensive.Not to say that UT2K3 isn't bassintensive, but the range of sounds used is wider than in Q3TA; UT’s backgroundmusic is also a lot better. Surprisingly, the headsets performed much morewholesomely in this game than in Q3TA.This is mostly due to the UT2K3itself being newer than Quake III.Still, I found the quality of sound displayed in these headphones to beimpressive when playing. The upper ranges were a bit more muffled than I wouldlike, but overall, the headsets provided a great aural environment. In fact,something of note was the fact that in both of these games, it was easy toidentify the headphone as the actual sound source. This was quite differentfrom the experience I had with the Perlman performance. Again, the headsetproves itself by revealing the differences in sound quality between twodiffering sound sources.
Next: Final Verdict >>
More PC Speakers Articles
More By Gnorb
| Recommended by Dev Hardware |
|---|
|
/ 52 
