Review: Steelseries Siberia V2 USB

Hi all. I wanted to share my initial review of the Steelseries Siberia V2 USB headset. Given the relatively mediocre quality of the audio on the NP8690, I wanted a dedicated USB driven headset. I had spent a great deal researching what was out there and eventually I narrowed down my choices to the Siberia and Creative's Arena headset. I chose the former as I saw many having a love-hate with the X-Fi and Creative's Win 7/64 drivers. Ordered a set from Amazon for $100, and they showed up last night.


Initial Impressions:
Overall these seem to be fairly sturdy headphones. I wouldn't recommend tossing them around or sitting on them, but I don't feel like they'll break by normal handling either.

One thing I don't care for is that the USB sound card does not plug straight into the USB port, as I thought (my bad). Instead it is connected to your laptop via another USB to mini-USB cable. A minor annoyance for me as I try to manage multiple cables (mouse, power, now headset).

When I first put the headset on, I noticed that it didn't "grip" to my (somewhat big) head. There was a gap in the earcups at the bottom. This bugged me a bit, especially compared to how other headphones I use. My Grado Labs SR60s, which I wear daily @ work, comfortably grip my head without gapping. Thankfully, this seemed to settle in after a few hours of wearing them, so I'm hoping it's just a break-in issue. I will say that they are very comfortable and light. I wasn't noticing them, as I wore them, even after a couple of hours, which is very good.

Another thing I love is that I can tuck the mic away. I love that little feature, as I rarely use voice-chat. But I also love that it's there for when I do need it.

One thing it really SUCKS is that there was no manual included. There's not even a CD with drivers & software that could have contained a PDF. You only get a little sheet telling you to go to the website to get needed software. That's a corner-cutting cost that I find horribly lame. At this point, I cannot even find a PDF manual on their website either. Would be nice to have some documentation to explain the caveats of their software.


Software:
As I stated elsewhere, I'm running Windows 7/64. Fortunately, Steelseries had just recently released a new iteration of Win 7 software, and I was able to get up and running without any issues. As I noted above, I've been unable to locate any documentation so have had to fly blind. Having used other audio configuration software, some configuration elements make sense whereas others are not intuitive.

What I found most irksome is that there does not seem to be any way to save individual profiles. Things sound much different if I am listening to MP3 music on 2 Channel vs 8 Channel settings, but I'd want the latter setting if I'm going to be gaming. An easy way to swap between profiles is a must-have feature which I'm praying is hidden but intact in this app. I'll be doing more experimenting later tonight.


Sound Quality:
Overall sound quality is pretty good. I was only able to toy around with the headphones for a few hours last night. I played the Supreme Commander 2 demo, some Star Trek Online, and listened to some music.

When gaming, I switched the software to 8 Channel mode, but left everything else at default. Overall I must say that I was rather pleased with the sound quality. The sound was very clear and immersive. My girlfriend was in the same room, watching TV, and I barely noticed that audio, so that is good. I'll note that by this time, the earcups had mostly sealed around my ears, which I believe helped.

With music, I fired up WinAmp and sampled a variety of different tracks. I listened to some Metallica, Manowar, Vivaldi, Mozart, Jimmy Buffett, Guster, and Sarah Mclachlan. I switched the software to 2 Channel mode for this, as music sounded terrible in 8 Channel mode. In the latter, everything came across very distant and lacked clarity. In 2 Channel mode (with all other default settings), the sound was pretty good. It won't satisfy a high-end audiophile, but I wouldn't expect these to. For me, they offered fairly good range. I knew that the bass wouldn't be super deep, but I felt it was satisfactory.


Things to Follow-Up On:
What I want to test more in-depth tonight is the Surround Sound. I'll be reinstalling CoD: MW2 for my gaming test, and checking out a few DVDs which I know have excellent Surround Sound. My initial impression was that I really could not distinguish front and back in Star Trek Online, but I'll reserved judgement until I've tested several other games.

I want to spend more time with their software, tweaking the equalizer to optimize these for different purposes (DVDs vs MP3s vs gaming). But if I cannot figure out a way to save multiple profiles, that will be a huge negative for me.

I'm also going to test the output of the USB sound card with my Etymotic ER6i's & Grado SR60s. This'll allow me to further test the capabilities of the USB sound card, independent of the headset. I'll probably plug the headset into my iPod so I can further evaluate the sound quality of just the headset.

Finally I need to test the mic. In the rare cases I use voice-chat, I use Ventrillo, so will put it through its paces later.


Overall Verdict:
If I had to give a final verdict now, I'd say that I got my money's worth. I'm fairly confident that with additional experimentation and tweaking with the software, that I'll find settings that are satisfactory to my needs. Even with default settings, as long as you choose the correct channel setting, the sound you get is quite good.

 

awesome review so far mate cant wait for the rest