Audio Quality and Comfort
So for my testing I ran with the Strix 7.1 at my main PC. This is the same PC that I do a good portion of my writing on as well as all of my gaming and anything in between. This means at times I was listening to music, watching TV shows or movies, and also gaming. That gave me a good variety of ways to test out the Strix 7.1 and plenty of extended sessions to test comfort. For microphone testing I spent some time listening to it myself as well as subjective testing in the LanOC Teamspeak server with others.
So to start things off lets go over the overall usability. First off, I am a huge fan of having a volume control right on your desk rather than having to tab out and change your audio settings in windows. Add to that being able to mute your audio or your microphone quickly as well. If you hook your speakers up to the base you can also quickly flip your audio back and forth between the headset and your speakers. Basically, when using this you should almost never need to dig into your windows audio settings for anything.
Over the time I tested the Strix 7.1 I had a good chance to use them from extended gaming sessions. This is where you can really tell how comfortable a headset is, because even a small issue becomes a big issue hours later. My initial thoughts on the Strix 7.1 when I first tried them on was that they were comfortable but big, bulky, and heavy. The top suspension strap was especially concerning for me though because when it moved at all it creaked, add that to a few creaks and noises when you move the headset I wasn’t impressed with the build quality of the headset. Once you get the headset on it didn’t really move around too much, but when it did you really notice it.
While the headset was comfortable early on, the weight and size of the headset did get to me a little in extended sessions, I felt a little pressure up top and the sealed earcup design also let things get a little warm after some use. This is a problem that I run into with most headsets, typically I just pull one earcup off at a time to cool down. But the Strix 7.1 is so large that it doesn’t have any flexibility to let you pull an earcup off. This concerns me more for people who will pull an earcup off when someone is talking to them for example though. Overall the Strix 7.1 wasn’t the most comfortable headset I have used, but it is better than some. Having full sized earcups alone is enough to put it above anything with earcups that press on your ears.
For audio testing, like I mentioned before I tested the Strix 7.1 in a wide variety of situations. For gaming I had the chance to play in a few different games, especially the recently introduced GTA V. When using the Strix 7.1 in game I was impressed with the directionality and audio quality in game. Toying with the different game settings did highlight gunshots and footsteps when set to those modes. The Strix 7.1 was obviously designed for in game use and it performed well. But how about when I was out of game? Well when watching movies the directionality was helpful but the overall audio quality was a little weak. When going into music testing this became a lot more obvious. When playing a few bass intensive songs I noticed that I would get a lot of distortion. Even with the volume turned down the audio performance when listening to music was less than exciting, flat, and lacked any punch. This isn’t a huge surprise, all of the space that 7.1 and similar headsets take up take away the valuable space needed for big drivers that are needed to get the best music performance.
The microphone on the Strix 7.1 was interesting. Initially I was really concerned with it. The quality was a little iffy and the microphone was so sensitive that it would pick up my breath all of the time unless I tucked the microphone all the way under my chin. The issues were bad enough that as soon as I got in Teamspeak everyone commented on me having microphone issues. After talking with Asus they suggested I try playing with the ENC switch on the bottom of the base. Oddly enough, this is actually when I found the switch. Turning ENC mode on was a night and day difference immediately, from then on I didn’t have any issues with the microphone on the headset.
