As I mentioned in yesterday’s summary, I sat down with the SteelSeries people about their new line of Xbox 360 audio peripherals. SteelSeries is mostly known for PC products designed with professional competitive gamers in mind. When they decided to get into the console market they went to the 360 and they brought the experience of the gamers who use their products with them. Through feedback and testing with the sorts of gamers who make money off of playing games and who’s needs are fairly exact and demanding, they developed three entry level products for the console market, namely the SteelSeries Spectrum 5xb (premium), SteelSeries Spectrum 4xb (scaled down entry level) and the SteelSeries AudioMixer.

I was able to check out all three of these in my time with SteelSeries and I came away fairly impressed. As far as sound is concerned, both headsets offer a sound quality made for gaming that doesn’t just include bass boosting. The sound is designed for the sorts of detail that will give a competitive player an edge like footsteps to key you into someone’s position so it does better with the mid and high ranges than a lot of headset do that just focus on heavy bass and general loudness. The headsets also allow for balancing between in game sound and headset chatter so one isn’t drowned out by the other and hands control to the player to adjust the mix without having to turn up the overall volume. That way you don’t have to worry about getting the game sounds perfect and having a jack ass 12 year old scream racial slurs into your ear damaging not only your sense of well being and faith in humanity  but also your hearing.

On an individual basis, the premium 5xb is made to be super durable and light weight for long gaming sessions. The cans themselves are vented to keep from getting overly hot on your ear and are light enough that it would be easy to forget you are wearing them. I obviously didn’t have them on for 12 hours but they felt great. I game almost exclusively with headphones on because my house is tiny and conducts sound like an amphitheater and after just a few hours my ears get hot and I am just tired of having the set on my head. The 5xb felt way better and the sound was really good on my iPod. I didn’t hear the set’s performance with a game but the songs I cycled through had a variety of high, low and mid range sounds and it sounded very solid.

As light as it was, one would expect it to be kind of fragile but since it is designed for tournament players who travel, as well as gamers in general who might not have the best anger management available, the band that goes across your head is extremely bendable and I saw a very impressive demonstration of that flexibility. The cord is reinforced double braided nylon as well and isn’t just the standard exposed rubber you find on most sets. This is a real plus for me as my cat Thunder currently has a $150 tab running on cords replaced due to chewing. He is lucky to be very, very cute. The cord is designed to really be yanked on and rolled over and seemed enormously sturdy to the touch.

For the portability angle, the whole thing comes apart for ease of travel and the mic is retractable into the can and flexible so it isn’t going to be snapped off or ripped out in a backpack or duffle bag. The importance of this was illustrated to me last night when I went to get my iPod at the airport to drown out the sounds of the two kids playing loudly across from me only to find the earpiece of one side snapped in half. Luckily, those are easily replaced and not too expensive. If my gaming headset were snapped in half I think I would be thoroughly gutted.

The 4xb is the entry level set and doesn’t include a lot of the above features as far as being able to break it down and twist it around quite so much. It is still of sturdy construction and features the comfortable cloth ear cushions. It also includes a scaled down approximation of the sound pin pointing features of the premium set. It isn’t so much a lesser set as much as it is a set designed for the more causal gamer who still doesn’t want to get in trouble with their sleeping significant other.

Finally, the AudioMixer that is included with both sets and separately allows any headset with two 35mm jacks to work on with the Xbox 360 controller. Given the quality of the included headset this is a good thing as almost anything else you find will be better.  It also has a much handier volume control  that is right there at the thumbs so you can turn goofy idiots off without having to go through and mute them individually.

Without putting each headset through its paces during gaming sessions it is hard to absolutely vouch for the quality of the Spectrum headsets but what I have seen so far has been really impressive and I am very excited to see how they are when they are released Q3 of this year. The 5xb in particular really addresses a lot of issues I have had with headsets and I wish it had been around when I was shopping for sets this past January. If it delivers all the features it promises then it will be a must buy for anyone who uses headsets, be it competitive or casual. The set I had my hands on this week certainly lived up to the claims so I have very high hopes for this.