Man I am so glad to find this thread,... kinda sad it's so dated though.
I need a little feedback and advice. After a lot of research on my own, I'm still stuck in the mud. I have in my possession now two fairly recently released headsets and less than 10 days remaining of a 30 day return window on one of these sets. Can't afford both. After doing a lot of reading, I first bought the Logitech G35. The sound quality on these things are outstanding,... they do quite well with music and gameplay (I play COD most). They're not so bright when it comes to movies though,... a serious problem with volume and I just wasn't convinced that the surround experience coming from the Dolby software driver was as good as I could get for the money. About a week later I went out and bought Tritton's AXPC Pro 5.1, thinking they would sound just as good with music and gameplay as the G35, but would also give me the surround experience more inline with my initial expectations. The plan was to A and B them for a couple days and return the set that lost the battle to win my ears. Not so easy! They both have their pros and they both have their cons. The AXPC Pro set just doesn't have that fat sound that comes out of the G35s when playing back CDs and MP3 files,... in fact, I'd even go so far as to say the AXPC Pro's sound is a little thin. When used for game play, the differences between the two are a lot less obvious, still the separation and sound positioning seems sharper with the Trittons. The multiple drivers for front, center and rear does make a difference in this department, but that's only one ingredient to the pie.
Now here's were I could use some advice and edumacation with this stuff. Now I've read that multi-driver headsets need lots of tweaking before they begin to sound off. But I may not have that kinda time unless I resign myself to owning two hundred dollar headsets. Not. I've also read that it's much easier for software drivers to do virtual surround than decoding discrete surround, and therefore the USB multi-driver headset (Tritton AXPC Pro 5.1) is a flawed design from square one. Reading this lead me to think that Tritton's line of headsets might be a better option if it weren't for the USB approach. (A quick note on 'USB for me'. My platform is a laptop,... a pretty strong laptop, but nonetheless a laptop, which rules out a sound card.) Am I correct in suspecting that the AXPC Pro 5.1 will not sound like the other two Tritton models just based on being USB? If I had more confidence in that suspicion, I would consider biting down a little and make the jump to the Tritton AX Pro. They're only about 40 bucks more than I paid for the Logitech G35s. From what I understand, they're fed by hardware decoding that's housed in the included audio controller,... and if I understand correctly, it's like having an external sound card. The only down side is, I've read that the AX Pro won't except input from nothing less than an Optical output. That's fine for the Xbox 360 and for watching HD TV and movies, but not for my laptop. However, I'm sure I could get my hands on a fiber optic enabled dock from my school's IT. Is the difference between these two approaches, software decoding and drivers vs hardware decoding wide enough to basically classify the AXPC Pro as a whole nother animal from the AX 5.1 PRo and the AX Pro? Or is it more accurate to say that if you've heard one Tritton Pro series headset, you've heard them all?
Hey guys,... thanks for any advice, help or education in this stuff. Much appreciated!