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On to the gaming. One reason why I bought these headphones was to save my wife the pain of listening to Falcon 4.0's bitchin' betty saying "Altitude Altitude" for nights on end. Roger Wilco communications can be pretty loud and irritating for her as well. They have to be because you cannot afford to miss a radio call when flying online coop. Many people are unaware that EAX and A3D soundcards (particularly the latter) were actually designed with headphone use in mind. So in addition to flight sims (where admittedly sound cues are not the most important), I tried them out with some first person shooters.
Occasionally for a quick 15 minute fix I really enjoy playing Unreal Tournament. In addition to some of the most astonishing computer graphics I've seen to date, it has an excellent techno-type soundtrack and excellent in-game sound effects done in EAX. Overall I found the switch from speakers to headphones extremely useful. With the Soundblaster Live! setup for headphones, the audio cues were very advantageous. You can very clearly hear somebody behind you, to either side, firing off in the distance etc. A quick headshot can mean the difference between winning and losing The quality of the sound output was amazing (as expected). I also tried UT on another system with a Soundblaster AWE64 and was a little less impressed. In particular, the ISA card had some hiss in the output. Clearly not the fault of the headphones but something to watch out for.
Even more advantage was gained by using the headphones with Rogue Spear. Once you play a seriously realistic FPS with headphones you will never go back. The crack of the rifles was sharp and the muffle of the silenced weapons was very well reproduced. The "boomy" bass quality of the headphones gave the grenades and shotgun a distinct "thud". I would probably have to spend thousands on a home theatre system to get the same level of audio immersion that the HD 490s provided me in this game.
Sennheiser HD 490 Live MSRP $75Overall I was very impressed with the quality, comfort, and sound that these relatively inexpensive headphones produced. If you are willing to spend an estimated $75 on a set of quality headphones look no further. The Sennheiser HD 490s will deliver.
- Comfort: 8/10
- Sound quality: 9/10
- Value: 10/10
- Overall Rating: 90%
