Turtle Beach Seven Series & Z300 Gaming Headsets Linus Tech Tips CES 2013
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,144 words · ~10 min read
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in the Turtle Beach Booth they're very proud of the seven series headset that
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they have just released here at the show is that correct uh we announced this
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headset actually at E3 2012 um but it's been designed in conjunction with major
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Le gaming so after we initially announced it we shopped it around to
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some Pro Gamers got their feedback on it we've made a few changes to the product
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and now we're relaunching it here at CS 2013 for a release later this month okay
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so I think we can both agree that a gaming headset is totally worthless if
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it's not comfortable is that correct absolutely so let's talk durability and
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comfort these are these are memory foil I can tell you guys right now that it's
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very comfortable this is some of the softest padding that I've encountered on
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the ears themselves check this out it takes this thing like a good couple
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steamboats to retract to its original
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position which means it's going to mold itself and it's not going to put a lot of pressure on your ears and on the side
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of your head when you have even memory foam that that rebounds very very
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quickly it can actually put added pressure versus this softer denser
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memory foam so that's that's something that I noticed immediately tell us what
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you guys have done s that I didn't notice that increases the comfort so
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there's a few things here uh number one and this is actually some of the
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feedback that we got from uh from our Pro Gamers that we talked to so the
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angle of this yoke here is incredibly
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important to how well a headset fits on somebody and so we made sure that we we
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took a bunch of head measurements we did a bunch of research to make sure that this would fit as many people as you
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know as possibly could obviously it's a headset you can't make it fit everyone
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perfectly but um that's one of the big things that we did the other thing is
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the position of the microphone on this headset it's designed to naturally come
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into front of your mouth where it's supposed to go um it stays in place so
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you're not fighting with it all the time but its position here on the ear cup is
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great the wire itself also is designed to be
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positioned back further on the headset so it's not going to interfere with the
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mic you're not going to get any sort of a uh does not come out doesn't does not
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come out oh no I was thinking of the other end okay the other end there's something very cool to show you guys
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that does come out yes the mic comes out just like that which is pretty handy so
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you can actually as as lonus here was saying it does connect why don't you
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show them and then uh you can see why the mic coming out matters all right
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guys so there's a few versions of this guy so there we're looking at the XP
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here which is hooked up to uh console but there's a PC version that also comes
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with this particularly cool doad and then there's a mobile version that does
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not include a microphone and doesn't come with this one so Jeff tell us what
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exactly this capacitive touch
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panel thing here does with all these different buttons and dials and
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spaceship so this is our audio control unit for the seven series basically it
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is the brains of the operation what it does is processes all of the sound so
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the headset disconnects right here here and this becomes a mobile headset so
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it's a passive headset that you can plug into your smartphone your tablet your
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mobile gaming console whatever you have um and connect it back here to the audio
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control unit so the audio control unit is where the surround sound magic
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happens number one it's also fully programmable so what happens is we have
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a tool that's called the advanced sound editor that you can download from our website load it up on your PC and get
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full control over exactly how the audio on the headset is processed when you do
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this you can actually do things like turn up the sound of footsteps turn up
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the sound of reloads turn down the sound of Tanks if you're playing a sports game
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you could turn off the crowd noise lots of really cool features and all of that
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is access via the audio control unit and can I change that around on the Fly
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while I'm actually in the middle of a game so the way that it works is you're
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allowed to load up eight individual presets when you're editing numbers one
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through eight you set it you set it into reset mode here when you pushed all the buttons on it um when you when you uh
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touch the numbers on it it switches among the different presets that are loaded onto it when you're editing a
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preset you do hear the sounds on the Fly change so you you can hear the edits as
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you make them very cool now you guys have another little input here that
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looks like it's got kind of a phone phone next to it what does this guy do
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that input is another stereo four pole connection you can connect either an MP3
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player or another smartphone to it when you do that then you can actually mix in
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your own music from your external device and or take phone calls directly through
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the headset so while you're gaming with your friends you can actually have a
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phone call as well so if I take a phone call uh I mean everyone that I'm on
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Skype with or ventrillo or whatever they're going to hear me my mom you know
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calling me my nickname from when I was a kid right nope definitely not this is a
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a mom nickname safe headset all right so it automatically is going to mix that
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out for me so they're not going to hear any of that very very cool stuff uh so
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we got some other oh yeah one more thing one more thing on this but wait there's
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more but wait there's more right so the seven series we know that a lot of pro
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gamers are in Clans they're in guilds they do a lot of things and they might
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want to customize the look of this product so the plates on the outside of
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this headset are actually designed to pop off and we're working on a system
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that will allow Gamers to upload their own images and create designs so that
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they can customize the look of their seven headset to suit their needs and if
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you want to play with your clan and you go to an event or something like that you can all have matching plates it's
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pretty cool stuff so you made a very bold claim when I first walked up to the
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booth where you said something along the lines of this is the best gaming headset
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ever with an a it is this is the most
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powerful and I'm going I'm going to preface this is one thing wired because
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we have wireless products that do the same stuff so in the world of wired
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headsets this is absolutely the most powerful most capable gaming headset
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that your money can buy awesome let's move on to the next product that this
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even twists probably shouldn't but yeah now
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we're showing you something that may not be as exciting from a huge amazing
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feature standpoint although he's keeping a couple things away from me that he
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hasn't told me yet so this is a lower priced headset than the seven but what
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does this do that makes it special and is a first for PC gaming he wouldn't
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tell me so this is the z300 and it does
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bring a few cool features that PC gamers are unused to having I think in headsets
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so number one the connection on this thing is very simple it's got a USB
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thumb stick type device you plug it in and by the time you're done crawling
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around under your desk plugging it in get back up into your chair it's done
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and your headset's ready to go it's a driverless plug-and-play installation it
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works on Windows Mac and Linux uh for
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all of the 7 or eight games that are still coming they're coming out um but
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it's a rechargeable battery it's a 15-hour rechargeable battery you can
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also play it while you're charging so if you decide you want to go on like a 27h
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hour Bender of uh Team Fortress 2 you can do that and you can play it while
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you're charging it's extremely comfortable it's got a dual pairing
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stereo Bluetooth in it as well so once again you can mix in your own music you
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can take phone calls over the Bluetooth while you're gaming if you wanted to
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pair the Bluetooth to the Bluetooth in your PC you could also do that it's also
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designed to have two audio inputs into the headset over that USB so if you're
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using ventrillo or Skype or Mumble what you can do is go into your um programs
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audio preferences set up the output for the chat Channel and then you actually
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have Hardware level chat control here so you don't have to Tab out of your game
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to adjust the chat volume then you've got game volume control which is your
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master system volume on the back of this ear cup right here so you don't ever
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have to Tab out of your game to adjust both your chat or your game volume two
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really sweet features this also runs on what we call our Dual Band Wi-Fi system
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which means it will have absolutely interference free connection Dual Band
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Wi-Fi is a Wi-Fi certified protocol it operates anywhere between 2.4 and 5 GHz
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when that transmitter fires itself up it's going to take a survey of the wireless networks around it it
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handshakes and negotiates with those networks creates an open pathway for
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itself and makes sure that it doesn't interfere with anything else so you won't get lag on the router or anything
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else like that uh tell me about the mode and the limiter buttons on this side on
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this ear cup okay so the limiter is is one of the cooler features on this
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headset I've got to say basic Bally if you're if you're playing a game and
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you're listening for a quiet sound like a footstep or something like that
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chances are you're probably going to be turning up the volume a little bit higher and then somebody's 100% going to
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drop a grenade right beside your foot and it's going to make it go deaf so what the limiter does is it limits the
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maximum volume so you can crank the volume to listen for those quieter
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sounds and then you can uh have have the
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assurance that you're not going to blow out your eard drums the mode button
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actually addresses this plug down here
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so we recognize that game don't stay at home in game all the time I mean
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sometimes we go out to the store to buy a new game right and um and that's all
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changing with steam so what you can do with that plug actually is uh it comes
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with a cable you can plug that into your smartphone and you've got a wired connection for listening to music so if
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you're on an airplane this is a mobile headphone you know they make you turn off the Bluetooth devices so you can use
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that for that as well sounds great thank you so much you've actually been a been
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a great interviewee for us so thank you guys don't miss any of the lineus tech
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