Audio Quality and Comfort

While it’s important to save money where you can when your budget is tight, the last thing you want to do is pick up a product and not have it perform up to your expectations. To make sure this doesn’t happen I have been using the Siberia RAW Prism for the past week for all of my gaming, work, and everyday computing. Doing this gives me the best idea of what to expect from the headset over long periods of time comfort wise and it gave me a chance to test the audio performance under various situations. So how did it perform?

Well let’s start on the comfort side of things. Actually, with the loss of the suspension headband I really was not optimistic for their comfort performance. Surprisingly they were actually very comfortable though. The soft padding didn’t press and cause discomfort over long periods of time and the perforated fabric covering it did a good job of keeping my ears cool. In fact I didn’t really have any heat issues, this rarely happens, even with some of the best headsets on the market my ears warm up. I think the biggest help for the comfort was the RAWs lightweight, there very much to them and that translated to less pushing on your head.

When using the Siberia RAW Prisms day to day I didn’t have any issues with the length of the cord. The microphone didn’t get in my way obviously due to their stubby microphone and I only had to turn the microphone up about half way for everyone to be able to hear me in Teamspeak. I did run into a bit of a problem though, with the microphone being that close it picks up on the audio playing through your headphones. This is made even worse because the headphones don’t really hold audio in as well, so I really had to tweak my microphone settings to get it to not pick up the headphones. To give you a way to test for this, go into your settings and turn your microphone to listen mode. If you get a high pitched running noise after making a noise then your microphone is picking up your headphone audio. I was able to get that ringing noise with the microphone set to 44% and the audio turned up to anything over 25%. A little feedback isn’t the end of the world as long as you know that anyone who is listening to you talk might also be able to hear your audio sounds. That means you might not want to listen to anything embarrassing when gaming with your friends for example. Using push to talk if you can with the RAWs should help keep that embarrassment to a minimum.    

Last but not least, what about the audio performance? I was actually extremely impressed over the course of the week of testing. With budget headsets I don’t really have high expectations but they weren’t far off from what I have seen from the Siberia V2’s. They were clear, loud, and did everything you will need them too do. In game I was especially impressed but day to day they kept up as well. When doing music testing they fell a little flat on both bass and on highs when listening to songs like Rap God from Eminem that hit everything at once. A little tweaking on the EQ helped on the highs but the lows are limited by the small enclosure size of the RAWs earcups. When compared to gaming headsets in the same price range I think that SteelSeries is on point where they should be.

 

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #35730 03 Oct 2014 14:14
Today I take a look at the new budget gaming headset from SteelSeries, the Siberia RAW Prism
TheChad replied the topic: #35768 16 Oct 2014 00:54
Hello.

Does the Siberia RAW Prism work on the PS3? It says it has compatibility on Windows, Mac OS X and on PlayStation. But all I've seen is the mention of the PS4, not the PS3.

Have you ever tested it on the PS3? Will it output the audio of the game on the headphones?

Thanks.
garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #35769 16 Oct 2014 02:56
I will be honest even though I have a PS3 I never use a headset with it. I haven't tested on the Siberia Elite Prism. The USB sound card hasn't changed from before so I would assume the answer would be the same as in this post.

faq.steelseries.com/questions/290/Can+I+...o+a+Playstation+3%3F

I did send over a message to SteelSeries to find out for sure. I will post up once I get an official answer for you Chad.
TheChad replied the topic: #35770 16 Oct 2014 05:44

garfi3ld wrote: I haven't tested on the Siberia Elite Prism.


Don't you mean the "Siberia RAW Prism"? Or is that not possible at all on the PS3, because it doesn't provide the 3.5 cable. I can see that the Elite Prism can work from that FAQ link.

But I meant the "Siberia RAW Prism". If you plug the USB cable of the Siberia RAW Prism on the PlayStation 3. Will it function? As in game sound being output on the headphones instead of the TV.
garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #35771 16 Oct 2014 06:10
Yeah sorry about that got mixed up with the two posts. I did ask SteelSeries about the correct headset though. I have a feeling that it won't work for in game audio because it doesn't have the removable USB sound card like the Elite. Will update tomorrow with what they say though

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