Use the (Ear) Force

I spend a lot of my Xbox 360 gaming time sitting at a desk playing on a HD monitor while my girlfriend sits in the same room on the ‘big telly’. Anyone that has attempted this kind of setup will know that sound can become a huge issue, annoying if you are playing the same game and a huge mess of audio if you are playing different games.My way around this was to use headphones while playing on the monitor, sitting them on top of my 360 headset. It works but there are two issues here. Firstly game sound in my left ear is basically inaudible and secondly it gets really uncomfortable really quick.

I did recently purchase a headset that claimed to mix game and voice audio together to solve this problem. I owned the headset for less than 24 hours, there was no way of balancing the game audio and voice chat so although I could tell that someone on my CoD team was talking I couldn’t tell what they were saying. Hushed mumbling it seems does not give a technical advantage.

But I’ve found by saviour and what a job it does. It seems Turtle Beach has some people with real smarts working for them. I purchased the Ear Force X1 headset last week from Lime, currently the only UK distributor for the Ear Force X headset range. It arrived promptly and well packaged.

The X1 is the cheapest of the X headsets, it is a fully wired solution that I hooked up easily with the multitude of cables you get in the box. You have several options on how this is done. The X2 and X3 are both wireless and although I’ve not used them I have heard they work just as well as the X1.

So what makes this headset so bloody good then? Lets make this simple.

• Excellent sound quality? – CHECK!
• Separate volume for voice and game audio? – CHECK!
• Mic Mute with LED indicator? – CHECK!
• Everything you’ll need in the box? – CHECK! (Including some extras)
• Built in USB powered amplifier – CHECK! (Genius Idea)

The best thing I can say about this headset is that it just works, better than you would expect. Don’t bother trying anything else.