Game:

Trials Evolution (2012)

Category:

Review

Duration: 3:45

3,996 views

8

(Note that this was an EARLY review, an I have since figured out how to improve the mic quality further. Updates in parathesis as I have them.) I wasn't sure whether to call this impressions, review, test or what. I am trying both of these for the main purpose of recording gaming walkthroughs with commentary on Youtube. Initial thoughts and troubleshooting steps below.

Thoughts-
OBS: After hours troubleshooting I have a working solution to record "Let's Plays" of Trials Evolution. I figured it was a good game to test with due to the fast and demanding nature. It looks like I could easily stream (such as to twitch.tv) instead of saving to a file, but I haven't tried it yet. My thoughts based on this test is that it's good software, but the quality is lossy. I am not sure if the advanced settings would help, but ultimately I may have to try something else.

Cavimanus: While initially impressed with the headset, I found the microphone quality as recorded through Fraps was muffled, like I was speaking through a blanket. I enabled "Listen" in Windows Sound settings and it sounded fine. Fraps has no audio editing qualities so I gave up on that. But let me back up. To even get this thing to play audio or record the mic, I had to go into the sound settings and set it to default device. It's a bit of a hassle to switch between the headset and speakers but manageable. With minimal testing, music sounds amazing on these, especially with the bass vibration function. As for comfort, even the largest ears should fit inside without touching anything. These last two points alone should make it worth keeping.

Troubleshooting-
Upon initially plugging the headset in, Windows installs some generic USB PnP driver. It works ok, but I wanted more options. I installed the included driver software, which seems to be designed to sit on top of the Generic driver. It really doesn't add many (if any) additional options for the mic, but organizes them in a confusing manner. There is an option for virtual 7.1 channel, but I haven't had the chance to test it. After messing with the options, I found the best configuration was to have the headset volume most of the way down...These things are LOUD!... but both microphone volumes all the way up... Yes, there are two, I don't understand this yet. Even so, the microphone seemed too quiet and muffled. I tried the microphone boost option, but there is no slider for this. It was way too loud, sent my microphone input back into the headset, and the mic picked up this delayed microphone sound from the headset. I believe that is called feedback, and it is unacceptable. (After further testing, I found a microphone volume of about 27 with microphone boost on, was optimal. However the headset still must be kept at a reasonable volume or the mic will pick it up)

I went to google for solutions, but there is almost no support or even threads about this headset. All I can find are glowing reviews of the product which all state the microphone is "amazing". It's to the point where I think I may have a defective unit. I thought about calling their support line but they'd just waste hours trying what I already tried. What I did try was OBS, which had it's own microphone boost, but this one had levels. It's to the point where it's acceptable now.

As for OBS I had a slew of other problems. It's a very easy to use software but just refused to record games in full screen. This is very popular so I was able to find similar issues. Apparently, it doesn't play well with Nvidia cards. I tried going into Nvidia settings and adding entries for OBS and each particular game I was testing, but no luck.

Ultimately the solution was to:
1. Unintall OBS
2. Go to C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Roaming and delete the folder called OBS
3. Reinstall OBS

It works now, but like I said I feel like the video quality is unacceptably low. Any thoughts on that or the microphone issue?

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