Linus Tech Tips coverage of CES 2014 is brought to you by ncx.com, your source
for great technology, selection, and service along with Corsair Memory and
Western Digital. We're going to kick off our Sennheiser booth tour with a look at
their game series headsets. Now, they
did make a bit of a mistake here. They they spelled game wrong. They're like
German or something. So, maybe spelling in English isn't a strong point, but
designing headsets is. So, we're going to start with the game one. If you've
ever used an HD 500 series headphone in
the last little while, these will probably look familiar. They've got
cloth padding. They have sort of a it's a soft but not memory foam style
padding. The drivers inside them are actually very similar to 500 series
drivers, but they've made a couple small tweaks to enhance things like sound
effects as well as dialogue in games without completely destroying the sound
signature because Sennheiser does know a thing or two about not destroying the
sound signature on their products. They have also updated the ID. So, they've
got kind of a white glossy design that's quite beautiful looking with a red
metallic accent color that goes around certain parts of it. They've got a
self-muting microphone. So, all you got to do is lower that to get it to work
and then raise it to get it to stop transmitting. And then finally, to make
it a gaming headset, they of course have a volume control knob on the other ear.
Now, this is the lower end of the two, although both of them cost over $200.
But this one right here is the one that I think many gamers will find quite
interesting, where the Game One uses an open back design, meaning that sound
tends to leak both in and out, which is not the greatest thing for immersion.
Personally, I prefer open back just because it does give a bit more of a a a
natural feeling to the sound. I think many gamers will be looking for the Game
One. So, this uses a closedback design. They've got sort of a pleather synthetic
leather cover on the ear cups. This enhances the noise isolation as well as
being more comfortable for certain people, although I personally do prefer
cloth. It also has a memory foam design
for both the ear cups and for the headband. And as you can see, that
happened while I was sitting here holding it. It has nice swiveing ear
cups so you can easily hang it around your neck, as well as a folding design
so you can pack it up and take it with you wherever you go. Now, both of these
headsets use standard 3 and 12 mm jacks,
which is great for PC gamers because with the way that sound card technology
has advanced in the last little while, even on just integrated Oh, I just
turned on those speakers because I unplugged this. Anyway, even with onboard sound, um I don't see a
particular reason why you would need a USB interface unless you, you know,
really had some special effects you wanted to apply to it. But the good news about it is that with this simple little
adapter, you've got not only PC compatibility, but also PlayStation 4
compatibility out of the box. This adapter is going to come at about
$14.99. It'll be available in a little while. However, you know, even though
we're standing in Sennheiser's booth, I'll tell you guys, there's nothing particularly special about it. It's a
four-pole to dual three-pole adapter. You can pick these up almost anywhere
and boom, you're ready to go on your PC or on your PlayStation with either of
these Game Series headsets. We've got three significant updates to
Sennheiser's Pro Series products. Now, I'll start with what they all have in
common. They all come with a professional-grade hard case. It's
actually super super nice. It's got gorgeous hard foam inside. I wouldn't be
worried about damaging these at all. They both come They all come there are
actually three models. They all come with two sets of ear cups. you whether
you prefer more of a pleather feel or whether you want something that's a velour which is a little bit different
from the traditional cloth ear cup that you'll find on headphones because it
will tend to help with noise isolation a little bit more than a very very
breathable cloth. They all come with detachable cables which you can actually
plug into either side. So if you have mixing equipment that tends to sit more
off to your left and you don't want the cable coming up that side, that's going
to be no problem for you. And they all come with both a straight cable and with
a coiled cable. The last thing that they all include is of course robust, rugged
build quality, although one of them is a little bit ahead of the others in terms of that space. Then we've got the HD7 DJ
and HD8 DJ. The key differences between these two are that the HD7 DJ tends to
have a little bit of a brighter sound at the high end and has a uh metal and
plastic construction. Other than that, they are lower impedance than the HD6
Mix. So, at 95 ohms, they can be used on pretty much anything. And they both have
ah, yes, this is a first for Sennheiser.
Check this out, guys. They've got a swiveling ear cup design that has three
distinctly locking positions. So, you can position them directly over the ear,
a little bit kind of half off the ear, or
way up there, so they sit on the head in a comfortable manner while being
completely out of the way. Now, I'd like to move on to the HD8 DJ. This one
features an all- metal construction, so it has some additional robustness uh to
go along with the well DJ optimized
sound signature. So, that is to say that unlike the HD6 Mix, these ones are
fairly fairly more neutrally except in
bass. So, they're going to be able to pound the bass and they're going to be able to pound it hard. They're both
capable of delivering up to 115 dB of
highquality sound to your ear, which is something that I wouldn't necessarily
recommend doing. But hey, if you're in a loud club and you got to hear what
you're working on, then I guess you don't really have much of a choice. So,
thanks for checking out our Sennheiser booth coverage, guys. Don't miss any of
our coverage of CES 2014 by making sure you're subscribed. And just as a
reminder, our trip to the show is powered by ncx.com, your source for
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