Glamour-shot of X41's

This week I’m taking a bit of a detour away from my Tuesday topic of late, Google Wave. Instead I’ll be covering the latest bit of gear to grace my ever-so-cluttered desk: Turtle Beach X41 headphones.

My world is generally dominated by two things: acronyms and cable-runs. Seriously, if you took a look at my workspace you’d see enough criss-crossing lines to make Jackson Polack proud. Needless to say, I do my best to minimize adding to this mess, but I usually fail; it is simply, I’ve come to accept, the way of my world. That reality didn’t stop me from yearning for a high-quality set of wireless headphones. Now, I’ve had some sets of high-quality cans in the past, I did afterall record and produce a couple of records, and I’ve had some wireless headphones, too; never both at the same time.

My first experience with Turtle Beach was about a bazillion years ago (15, actually, but who’s counting, right?) with their Malibu sound card. I was turned on to the company by my buddy Cory Casciato who was making cool electronic music at the time and using the card as a sampler. As a wannabe Reznor myself, I was instantly in love with their gear. I used that card until I could no longer find a motherboard to support the ISA slot that the card required. It was the end of an era.

I’d lost track of Turtle Beach after that, the times being dominated by Creative’s Soundblaster series of cards, and me not really being involved in making music any longer. That all changed when I got hooked up with a Modern Warfare 2 special-edition XBOX 360 Elite. After running through the campaign mode twice I decided to jump into online play via XBOX-Live. I was summarily pwned is just about every way possible. I’m not really much of a FPS player, doubly so with a controller in hand, so I chalked it up to that, at least initially. I was fine with people being better than me, as this was my first foray into online multiplayer in the CoD series, and my first ever FPS with a controller instead of a Mouse/KB. But there seemed to be something else involved, it seemed that there was more to the equation than me and my flipper-hands not being able to aim, run, jump and shoot simultaneously. It was like other people had a sixth-sense about them, and that I was Tommy; deaf, dumb & blind. Then there was the issue of how irritating the sounds of the game were to Dani. The sounds of automatic gunfire, inbound harrier strikes and the blasts from and AC-130 are not conducive to rational thought, let alone peaceful sleep. Thus began my search for a set of headphones that would eliminate at least a few of my problems.

That search led me back to the promised land of Turtle Beach, and their flagship X41’s.

The headphones are honestly fucking amazing. They produce 7.1 surround sound thanks to their onboard Dolby PL II processor, take an optical SPDIF input AND standard RCA, they even have an auxiliary headphone output (with independent volume control) and SPDIF passthrough should you need to pipe sound out of the main unit/headphone rack into a secondary device.

Audio is crystal clear and has zero perceptible latency and the surround capability is truly a godsend, especially in a game where situational awareness is a must. You can hear footsteps, people reloading their weapons, even hitting the ground after a jump. Additionally, the headphones have an adjustable volume for in-game communications as well as an automatic gain that adjusts volume during loud, intense moments where you’d otherwise be fumbling for the inline volume. The built in, hugely adjustable microphone faithfully reproduces the users voice (for better or worse,) stays in place and can even be removed if not communicating in-game, and is sensitive enough to be used as a throat-mic if the user is so inclined.

The only two complaints I have about these cans are the price (which you can’t really do anything about) and the side effects of their voracious appetite for battery power. Supposedly they contain tech that will drain batteries to their last drop of power before going into their death-throws (more on that in a second,) and should last nearly 24 hours before needing replacement. Sadly, even with high-quality uber-alkalines I’ve not yet been able to achieve anything close to those kinds of times. The death-throws of the batteries are something else entirely. Something extremely painful, and potentially ear-damaging as well. When the batteries do go, they begin by making a popping noise that is akin to a hot-mic being plugged in to a mixer, that lasts for maybe two seconds before degenerating into a glass-through-a-cat-penis hissing/screech that would make an audiologist faint. Check out this video, and tell me if this is something appropriate to have blasted into your eardrum with little-to-no warning.

Seriously, right?! I’m not a doctor, but having spent years around loud amplification and screeching feedback, I’m sure that shit isn’t going to do your tinnitus any good. At all. The best part is that there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it. It will happen with frequency and will inevitably catch you by surprise in the middle of a firefight or sometihng else important.

Fortunately, I’m thinking that the solution to this issue is also the solution to their appetite: high-quality rechargable batteries. The only solution that I can see is to simply start each and every session with a freshly charged set of AAA’s and replace then if ANYTHING starts to sound funny at all. I’m currently testing this theory and will report if all goes well.

In short, barring some relatively minor problems these are the best headphones I’ve ever owned. Their ability to process surround sound makes them ideal for gaming, music, and movies. As long as you feed them properly they’ll be a long-term addition to your arsenal that you won’t regret.