Creative World of Warcraft Wireless Headset Review @ [H]

Hey guys, Ryan is still monitoring the thread. Keep posting things in here and I am sure he will pop up. If you give him good constructive feedback, he listens and I know that for a fact. He worked on the driver issue with me from the get-go. When you give good positive feedback and suggestions, it really really works. Tell him what you like about other sets specifically. BE WAY over specific and I bet that he can find what he needs.

Thanks for participating,
Earl Keim, HardOCP reviewer
 
Hey guys,

Sorry I didn't get back to this thread sooner. I've been busy prepping for a business trip to Singapore but I've been checking back in here to see if anything came up.

Krotch, to answer your question. It's not secret as a hardware maker you look to target the back half of the year (starting the Aug / Sept timeframe) to get product available and reviewed for the holiday season. To be a bit more precise...I hear QuakeCon has moved to a new venue this year? ;)

I have to say this thread is actually quite refreshing to read, it perfectly shows the crazy amount of opinions that are out there when you talk about "sound" and especially "high-quality sound", and even MORESO when you talk about "high-quality pc or gaming sound". There's a ton of opinions out there. And frankly, they are all basically right because sound is such a subjective thing in general. I mean some people actually like Smashmouth too.

That being said. With the World of Warcraft line, like I mentioned before we went full out with the mindset that we were going to set new ground for headsets, and in particular on the sound quality of the wireless. I understand 100% peoples skepticism. When we first started the project and we were testing out the first prototype units (just some cups with the wireless module attached) I actually had to check myself and say "is this REALLY wireless?". I'd heard just about every wireless solution out there from about 10 different companies talking about how great their wireless tech was. And that was 2 generations of the chip prior to what we shipped with.

To be clear...we're not making ANY claims to be "audiophile grade". That's a whole world that you don't want to enter unless you're ready to have a full compliment of white papers and test results to back up your claim (as we saw with some of the posts earlier). I can say unequivocally though that as of my posting of this...no one comes even close to us in delivering wireless sound on the PC with the feature set we've provided for the price point...and I think someone who loves to have a badass experience while gaming or listen to music will love the sound quality. That was our goal. Throw in some of the other bells and whistles that were catered to the WoW demographic and you have a product that we hope lives up to the WoW (and other PC Gamers) expectations.

I saw on another thread someone comment on the whole "negative reviews online" thing. And they are right. In general...you're going to get someone that had a negative experience posting up a review because I think all of us have been there at one time. You get a product, you are excited. Then it doesn't work right. That's going to tick anyone off...and the web is such a wonderful punching bag for people to vent their frustrations. If you're having a positive experience you're more than likely going to sit at home and just USE your new toy. The goal however is to avoid those negative reviews from the get-go. You want people who are buying your products to have that experience you planned. Which is why I have been actually following the review threads and hitting up people directly who have had issues. Luckily they are far enough between to not have swamped me..and the real-time feedback I got back from those who I approached allowed us to track down issues to the source.

I can honestly tell you guys. I'm VERY excited for what we have coming later in the year...and I think you will be too. The WoW headset is just the beginning of the headset line from Sound Blaster.

In the meantime like Earl mentioned. If you have feedback or suggestions I'm all ears.

- Ryan
 
zg75 said:
Designed for gaming usually equates to shitty with game related physical design and a $30 bump in price. What most of them seemed to be saying was -- if a set of cans are designed correctly then they will be great for whatever audio is coming out of them. That said, someone get the Creative d00d back in here to tell us when we can get these without WoW branding!
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Actually I missed this one.

In most cases you are right. Especially when you're talking about sound products.

We're hoping our line changes peoples minds on that and makes everyone else play by a new set of rules and expectations of what "gaming class" sound means.
 
so, I see you dodged the question completely, ARE you gonna do something with the same quality in wireless just with out the WoW branding? some kind of generic gaming theme would be ok I guess but I am not a big fan of WoW,
 
Judd Sandage said:
so, I see you dodged the question completely, ARE you gonna do something with the same quality in wireless just with out the WoW branding? some kind of generic gaming theme would be ok I guess but I am not a big fan of WoW,
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Ryan already hinted in a previous post that they are planning something that isn't wow branded for later this year
 
well, I ordered these last Friday. I will be getting them in Wed.

I'll let you guys know what I find since I got them for wow and FPS. Im more worried about durability and comfort rather than audiophile quality. I will be comparing them to some $70 KOSS headsets I own.
 
Yeah, I am hoping so, too. To be clear I was saying that typically in the past this was the case, wasn't a rip on the WoW headset which seems to be getting a lot of positive buzz :).

CreativeRS said:
Actually I missed this one.

In most cases you are right. Especially when you're talking about sound products.

We're hoping our line changes peoples minds on that and makes everyone else play by a new set of rules and expectations of what "gaming class" sound means.
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Olaf said:
I'm interested in this headset because I have always wanted a wireless headset. Before I buy a pair I would like to know how well they work with Ventrilo.
Click to expand...

Works fine for me so far. Just started using them last night but no issues here. I'm responding now just in case you did not get a proper response.
 
I am still using mine and loving them. Can get a little hot if the temp in my office is 80F or so, but I guess that is to be expected from a ear cup you can wipe off to clean.
 
Ok other than my post about Vent allow me to post something here.

Head size. I dunno what I am. Friggen huge. I have to buy the biggest hats I can find kind of huge head. I'm a big man WITH big bones to support my being a big man Perhaps that equates to my huge ass head. Anyway I digress.

The can's. I do dig them. Got to play with them so far a whole hour so take that to whatever bank you choose. They are comfortable. I was using some Triton TT can's directly previous. And before that I had an old Turtle beach 5.1 setup. They were cool too. But I never really got positional audio from them. Dunno why just never did. I did all of the setups I could think of to get it to work. Just never gave me the depth of field as my 5.1 bipolar rear speaker system does in the living room. Maybe I'm just picky. My friends would count me as perhaps the "audiophile" of our group.

Those damn cables. My Triton TT cables would always twist up. Even the casing on the cabling started to split from being twisted and untwisted. Same thing happened and eventually destroyed my Turtle Beach headset I had before. (BTW.. I think they are the same damn headsets just re-licensed/re-branded. the connectors are the same. And they jazzed up the in line amp. but everything else about them felt and sounded the same. Perhaps that is why they were at the same 100 dollar price point.

When I heard about these headsets I was kind of non plussed. How good could wireless audio be. My son digs the looks on them (I'm 35 btw) and plays WOW too. But a couple I know bought these for gaming in their apartment. (they both run pretty blinged out i7 920's with 12 gigs of ram on 24 inch monitors to play WOW mind you. With Raptor 10krpm drives. The only thing I fault them for is gaming on a wifi signal in their apartment so they can put their desks in front of their OLED tv to friggen watch tv and play wow. Yea they are that geeky. I'd be with them doing that if I wasn't engaged/married.) Anyway they both love their headsets. For them the customizable colors help them to keep from grabbing the wrong headset. And yea they use vent and stuff. I've been BEGGING them to get real gaming headsets because the lean in to talk to the desk side mike crap sucks.

Uhhh I got distracted for a moment didn't I.

Anyway yes the headsets kick ass. I enjoy mine. The voice masking isn't all that great if you have a deep voice. (the female voices sound like young boys.) And the malganis (sp) voice just sounds like rocks tumbling down a hill rather than understandable to others especially over something like Ventrillo. Other than that the Microphone IS sensitive. you will need to turn the Sensitivity DOWN on this microphone. And it WILL pick up ambient noises I'm sure. So push to talk is needed.

I did go ahead and apply the firmware update to my cans before using them. guess I should read what that fixes huh. ;) (Oh hey this fixes an over sensitive microphone. Sweet. Wonder if this fixes the Microphone squeal after several hours of use also that so many have reported.)

And as an additional note. It seems that Creative Labs and specifically this team is on the ball with resolving and tweaking this product once released to the wild. Now the test will be if they can maintain that like Blizzard maintains the constant class and balance tweaks. Will horde lenses become less effective and Alliance lenses overpopulate servers?
 
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I am asking Ryan to get us an [H] lens made. You never know, he might just do it......

he he, wishful thinking.

Earl Keim
WoW Wireless Headset Reviewer
 
Well, my headset came in last night.

I love them. Super comfy! I posted a review on newegg so I wont go into detail here.

I did the same, firmware upgrade. uninstalled my old sound drivers and whatnot.

Everything works. Very happy with them. This was a big upgrade from my KOSS headphones and X-fi Extreme Music card.

I have already talked some guildies into picking some up :D
 
I just picked up a set from Best Buy today. I'll try them out after work and post my impressions later this evening.
 
EarlKeim said:
I am asking Ryan to get us an [H] lens made. You never know, he might just do it......
Click to expand...

I think Creative missed a marketing cash cow with this headset in tying it solely to WoW. Get rid of the WoW glyphs/branding and make oodles of lenses for other games and I'd be interested.

Hell, if there were TF2 Red/Blu lenses for it I'd would've snagged a pair just for cool factor.
 
Saturn_V said:
I think Creative missed a marketing cash cow with this headset in tying it solely to WoW. Get rid of the WoW glyphs/branding and make oodles of lenses for other games and I'd be interested.

Hell, if there were TF2 Red/Blu lenses for it I'd would've snagged a pair just for cool factor.
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Actually it's probably just the opposite.

There are probably 100x more WOW players right now than there are TF2.
 
jebo_4jc said:
There are probably 100x more WOW players right now than there are TF2.
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Given. But you really think the audience for WoW is greater than all other PC gamers combined? IMO, that's the market they should've gone for. And they could've sold accessory lenses from *other games* at $10/pair?? That's a lot of potential cheddar right there.

I don't play WoW or any MMO, no interest. But I'm not going to play any online game without vox.
 
I like the headset. Nice sound, comfortable. I recommend them highly.
 
So.... I have to be doing something wrong here... but I can't see any drivers/software for windows (other than a firmware update) when I go to this website that the quick start manual says to go to:
Support

Where did everyone go to get their drivers/software?

Edit: When I try and click on All or Drivers, or... it always redirects me to the PCIE Titanium downloads. Very strange.
 
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Second night with these.

Earl, you were so right about these. your review was spot on.

I am hearing things in WoW that I havent heard in the last 5 years. I was floored in the log in screen when the bone dragon started flaping it's wings and the ambient noises were crazy!

Since I got the deal at the egg that had the free 60 day game card, I have to say I am happy with the purchase. I hope the cans dont snap off one of these days....
 
EarlKeim said:
These are direct download links for you:
I used Windows 7 64 bit. After installing the software update, all of my X-FI titanium conflicts with my mixer settings were fixed.

cheers
Earl Keim (WoW Wireless Headset reviewer)
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Thanks! When I came in to work, the All selection was working... so it must have been an issue with my IE.

What sliders did you adjust to compensate for the Treble on the EQ slider and by how much; if you don't mind me asking.
 
Well I had listed a personal preference for EQ settings and what I thought best, but I have to say that EQ settings are so subjective to each listener. Some people love BASS-y sound and others prefer a flat EQ. I hate to leave you in the dark, but if there is one thing I have learned in the last two months is that EVERY single person will have a different EQ preference and a long list of reasons why. When people offer the absolute suggestion of a "flat" EQ it just seems silly, because that means we should never have been given the choice to begin with.
 
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After reading this review, PC Gamer's review, and hearing it in action on the PC Gamer podcast, I decided I'd get these. I went to Fry's and had to wade my way through open box returns of these to find the last one that was still brand new.

Initial impression? Slick packaging. Until I had to find the USB receiver. Why do I have to search every nook and cranny of this box to find it? Why isn't it in the bag with the USB cables and mic? Frustrated and sleepy, I hook the headset up so that it can charge overnight.

This morning, I hooked it up to my gaming PC. Installed the latest drivers and updated the firmware.

Initial impression? As I put them on my head, they felt... cheap. It's probably because the cups spin around fairly loosely. The buttons rocked a bit when you pushed them, as the plastic's much bigger than the actual switch. They're very cushy though. Watched an episode of Doctor Who on them and not only were they fairly comfortable for someone who wears glasses, they sounded all right, too. The lights are really dorky and since I figured they drained a bit of power too, was relieved to find that you could turn them off in the headset's control panel. Seeing the Male Gnome voice setting, I toggled it and quickly hit up my buddies on Steam. This should get a few good laughs, I figured.

Fired up Left 4 Dead 2 with a few buddies, hit the push to talk button and... nothing! After setting the recording level up (no boost?), my friends could barely hear me under a mountain of electronic hissing and background noise. Uninstalled the bazillion different applications that were part of the default install and gave it another go. Same thing. Since I use both an X-Fi and another sound card in my gaming PC, I figured perhaps Win7 didn't care for another audio device so-

I grabbed my Vista 64 laptop and installed the drivers. Same thing. Vista 32 HTPC box. Same thing. Took a trip to the Creative forums and it seems like microphone problems are the big issue everyone's complaining about.

Suffice it to say. These are going back in the morning. Even if they did work perfectly out of the box, in hind sight, $180 after tax is -a lot- of money for what you get. This will be the second set of Creative headsets that I have purchased that did not work out of the box and this one will be the last Creative headset I purchase.
 
Kett said:
Audiophile grade 5.1 and 7.1 speakers don't exist yet. There's a reason for that: It's just plain not a good form factor the way it currently exists. (Someone point out some if i'm wrong, I'd love to know about them.) All current implementations of "True" 5.1 and 7.1 speaker headphones are absolute junk. That's my opinion I suppose, but it's also an opinion shared by a lot of people who appreciate good headphones, gamers and non-gamers alike. Maybe the Psyko will change that with it's new approach and I sincerely hope so because it would be cool, but I remain skeptical. The WoW headset is not a 5.1/7.1 headset, by the way. It's a two-speaker virtual surround system. Closer or identical to what you would have with a normal pair of headphones using X-Fi CMSS or something similar.
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This is where (in my opinion), you're wrong.
#1: For off the shelf, the Klipsch Promedia Ultra 5.1's were pretty bitchin sound quality for computer speakers, and actually approached the sound quality of a basic entry level "audiophile" setup. Compared to the Logitech 5.1 Z5500's, both the quality of the sub (I have both--I should know) and the sats (the loggies don't even have a woofer; its basically an all in one tweeter), blew the logitechs away. The problem of course is the amp and the heat issues causing the amp to die eventually, on most, if not all people's units, but if you can get the parts redone with higher grade material and add some cooling that doesn't interfere with the sound, you're good to go.

Comparing the Klipsch sats directly to my Beyerdynamic headset, the beyer obviously sounds better (more detailed highs and crisper bass-of course keeping the sub out of the picture), but I was pretty impressed with how nicely the sats sounded. Both were nicely above the Astro headset I also have.

#2: You can BUILD a 5.1 audiophile speaker setup easily if you get custom parts. One famous pro UT2004 player and audiophiler, Cadobhuk (I Think that was his name) showed me some of his reference speakers. He had these HUGE tall narrow speakers in his room; on a huge stand; you can't even classify them as satellites; they cost $1,000 per speaker. And he had them in a 4.1 setup I think. I don't know if they were hooked up to a receiver but they probably were. (no idea if there were direct jacks to the computer). There you go--audiophile quality surround sound. It's just not something you are going to buy off the shelf.

#3: No idea about the psyko headphones. If they don't sound at LEAST as good as my Klipsch satellites do (since both give unprocessed 5.1), then I won't touch them. And with multiple small drivers per earcup, I wouldn't hold my breath. And even then, even if a headphone somehow managed to cram in high quality mini drivers per cup, you still have to deal with the absolute lack of surround DEPTH you get if you're using a headset without dolby digital processing, which can cause headaches after long use. I've used CMSS 3D headphone, and although the positional 5.1 works nicely, it feels way too much like all the sounds are coming from my head instead of outside my head, like the brain expects them to come from. Beyerdynamic MMX 300+Astro mixamp for the win here.

*edit*
About using a non VERY expensive speaker setup for competitive gaming/footsteps:
The problem with using computer speakers for footsteps (even something decent like Klipschs) is ambient sound and spacing actually makes hard to hear sounds like footsteps even harder to hear, unless you crank up the volume to almost unacceptable levels for many in-game sounds, as compared to a good headset. You would need some very expensive speakers, which can deliver alot of power, without damaging your hearing, if you want a speaker system to excel in this area.
The only "weakness" I see in headphones, compared to a 5.1 speaker setup, is there are only two drivers, loud gunshots/explosions coming from in front of you or to the side, are going to COMPLETELY obscure any footsteps coming from BEHIND you (assuming you're using something like Dolby digital/Astro Mixamp/Oxygen soundcard, CMSS headphone, etc), as one/two drivers simply won't be able to distinguish the sounds separately as well as if you had multiple speakers. But then your brain would have to somehow pick apart the footsteps when you're being innudated in gunshots from the other speakers....
 
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Great review as always Kyle. I may keep these in mind if I'm in the market for some wireless headsets.
 
Falkentyne said:
This is where (in my opinion), you're wrong.
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To correct this; When I said "Audiophile grade 5.1 and 7.1 speakers don't exist yet", I meant "Audiophile grade 5.1 and 7.1 headphones don't exist yet".

I have no qualms with actual surround setups using speakers. They're great.
 
Saturn_V said:
I think Creative missed a marketing cash cow with this headset in tying it solely to WoW. Get rid of the WoW glyphs/branding and make oodles of lenses for other games and I'd be interested.

Hell, if there were TF2 Red/Blu lenses for it I'd would've snagged a pair just for cool factor.
Click to expand...

I think it was actually pretty stupid of them to brand them at all. You can tell just by responses on how many people don't like the WoW branding, even when they play WoW (like me). Of course having options doesn't hurt. I can't imagine that they actually took a group of just general gamers and asked them if the WoW branding was a good idea. They probably picked out some WoW gamers that were dressed up as their characters at a convention to give their opinion.

I do wonder who came up with a stupid idea like that. Knowing quite a lot of people that play WoW, I don't know any of them that even buys anything wow branded period. I bet they lost more sales on these by making them branded, then by the number of sales they got by branding them. Not even to mention price difference do to them being branded.

It would be pretty funny if they just took this exact model, de-wowed it, and released it for $25 - $50 less. I bet their sales would be through the roof. Instead they will probably wait 6+ months not getting sales they could mooch off this idea, then possibly come out with another branded product :p I'm guessing hello kitty online next ;)
 
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Ok just a quick response on the WOW branding.

If you listen to the interviews about this headset the WOW branding had a lot to do with the quality of the headset that was brought to market.

I know of at a minimum three people that play WOW that purchased these, Myself and a couple I know that also got one set for each of them. And they love them.

So Yes the WOW branding is working. (Would love a reg code for an in game item or maybe a pet rocking the wow headset lol.)

Then again we are all huge adult nerds.
 
Kyle and Earl how do you guys feel this compares to using a Senn HD555/AT ATH A700 with an X-Fi discrete sound card.

I'm surprised this kind of comparison wasn't included.

I'm a big fan of WoW, but would definitely prefer a non-branded/non-bling option.
 
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The WoW headset was good on so many levels but as far as replacing your dedicated sound card? Have to look into that. But if you have onboard and want a nice alternative, definitely! Older games that use Alchemy to restore hardware accelerated sound in Vista and Windows 7 worked really well as I said.

Me? I toggle back and forth by clicking my speaker icon in the systray when I want to use the WoW headset. When I use my speakers, I just go back to my X-FI Titanium.

Cheers,
Earl Keim
Reviewer of The Creative World of Warcraft Headset
 
Thank you for the feedback Earl. I was running onboard for so long. Switching to the wow headset has been nice.
 
Out of curiosity, what sort of an EQ setting did you pick? I am looking for other members' preferred EQ settings for comparisons in future reviews and testing. Games, TV, Movies?

Cheers,
Earl Keim,
WoW Headset and Psyko 5.1 Headset reviewer
 
Out of curiosity, are we going to get another review of another product soon?
 
Just did the Audio-Technica's last week.

That should ease your mind :)

Cheers,
Earl Keim,
HardOCP reviewer
 
Just out of curiosity what is it that made you guys think/say that these headsets support hardware acceleration?

At this Creative support site, one can find settings to configure some of the most popular games of the last ten years. Alchemy has recently been updated from version 1.30 to 1.41 and this new version works extremely well in Windows 7 and Vista, 32 and 64 bit. Other companies offer a similar program to restore Direct Sound hardware acceleration, but none of those are as effective as Alchemy in my opinion. After using the prescribed settings, I have to express how fantastic World of Warcraft sounded. Before I used Alchemy to restore hardware acceleration, the game sounded fine, but there was no ambience and everything sounded flat and dull on my headset and my personal speakers. After using Creative’s Alchemy, I restarted the game, and it immediately gained a different sounding and realistic atmosphere with the headset. Suddenly, I heard positional audio cues and subtle music all around me. Sounds were crisp and resonated from every part of each ear cup. It was simply amazing.
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I visited that link and found no mention of a few crucial steps in order to make WoW work on Vista/Windows 7 with Hardware Acceleration; such as enabling XP SP2 compatibility on the .exe file. Did you check your SESound file inside of your Logs directory to see if it was, in fact, working? How about the dsoundlog file inside of your main Warcraft directory?

I ask these things because I purchased this headset based on the [H] review and honestly, I really do NOT think they support HARDWARE acceleration. My dsoundlog says "Using Creative Software 3D Library" instead of the True Hardware acceleration wording which would read "Using Native OpenAL Renderer" no?
 
I am going to enable another trial of WoW and post you a log file for you to see that the acceleration is enabled.

Give me a few days and I will post the log file before and after.

Cheers
 
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