CM Storm Sirus - Gaming Headset with True 5.1 Surround Sound and Control Module

The Good- They are comfortable and they look really nice. The construction is sturdy, probably the best I've owned in that regard. The braided cable is a nice touch as well. They sound really good after some tweaking.The Bad- You have to tweak them to get a decent mix between lows, mids and highs. Out of the box it's all highs and lows which really sounds odd in shooters like battlefield 3. Imagine you hear a booming low bass rumble when a tank blast hits next to you only to hear the tank roll by you and its all treble. I also noticed my machine gun sounded like someone drumming on a snare drum with virtually no bass. Even after tweaking the sound for a few hours I still felt like the mids just were not as powerful as they should be. A tank rolling by should have some bass in the roar of the engine, a machine gun should have some thump when you fire it, explosions in the distance should be acompanied by a rumble of bass. The reason I'm saying this is because my last headset(teknmotion)pulled these effects off very well using my sound card's virtual 3d/surround effects and at half the price.The Ugly- That neat little dial with all the shiny buttons and cool gadgets is completely obsolete if you are using this with a sound card. in fact, you can't use it at all if you want True 5.1 which presents three problems-1. It shortens the cord tremendously not having this plugged in.2. No volume control- fortunately for me my keyboard has built in volume control, otherwise you will have to do it from the desktop which can be a pain for gamers.3. No software support for tweaking the sound. That means you won't be able to tune each speaker independently unless you have something like thx console for your soundcard. It would be nice if they had some software that could be used in conjunction with your soundcard with some preset profiles for games and movies. Unfortunately, you are left at the mercy of your soundcard's equilizer and hours of painstaking tweaking to find the "sweet spot" for highs, mids, and lows.Conclusion: I simply can't recommend these based on the price unless you DON'T have a dedicated soundcard in your pc. This headset wants to be great but comes up just short. Now I have to decide if I want to spend the time tweaking the equilizer or just return them and replace my old Teknmotion cans. Decisions, decisions...

I'll start with the bad news - I had to replace the first headset I got. When I unboxed the first one, the headset cable was very tightly wrapped with a twist tie (it must have been done by the 800 pound gorilla at the plant). When I got it hooked up, the headset made a loud popping/crackling noise when the middle part of the cable moved. I requested an exchange from Amazon, and they shipped the replacement the same day. I got the second one in two days, and I have 30 days to return the first one. It's hard to beat service like that. This review is based just on the second unit.Unboxing is a bit odd. The headset and puck are twist-tied to a plastic holder, and the cables run through the plastic and into a small hole in a smaller box that also has the other earcups, software, cable and such. If I had to do it over, I'd first take everything out of the smaller box and untie the cables, so they would pull out of the holes easier, then untie the stuff from the holder (you could just rip the box open and cut the plastic, but I wanted to save it).Like other people have said, the quality of the materials is excellent.Our digital kitchen scale says the headset part itself weights 13.9 ounces (394 grams). I wore them four hours the first day and found them light, and very comfortable to wear, even with my large (7 5/8 hat) head. The mesh earcups don't let in much external noise, so don't count on them letting you hear your spouse!Other reviewers mentioned problems with cable length, so I measured them. From the headset to the connector is 50 inches (127cm) The puck/USB cable is 7 feet (2.1 meters) The headset to soundcard cable is 38" (97cm) The USB part of this cable extends another 8" (20cm).So if you use the puck, you have 11' 2" of cable, or 7' 4" with the sound card connector. (I'd suggest you cut a piece of string to length to see if you'll need extension cables for the sound card connection.)When I plugged these in the first time, I used the puck, and was surprised to see Win 7 install a driver. I thought I would need the included software. After the restart, I put some tunes on, and the sound sucked. It reminded me of the single-speaker AM radio I had in a 1967 VW Beetle (yeah - I'm that old). I thought that nobody would make a headset this bad, so I opened up Win 7 control panel/sound, and found it was a Sirus driver from 2010, but it was for 7.1 surround. If you click the "configure" button, you can test your speakers, and it was obvious this wasn't working right. So I put the software disk in, and it replaced the 7.1 driver with a 5.1, which made a huge difference. I went through the rest of the "configure" wizard, and set things to my liking.[edit] The "Sirus Manual.pdf" file doesn't automatically transfer from the disk, so you should make a copy if you want one handy.I'm not an audiophile, but I listen on headphones a bunch, and this is plenty good enough for me. Are they as good as my expensive stereo phones? No, but I didn't expect them to be. I was going to try the soundcard connector, but I'm not going to bother.My standard test is listening to the Doors' "Light My Fire." I've listened to that song on headsets at eye-watering volumes more that any other. So I put that on, and was disappointed with the max volume. I wanted "11" and got about "9." I pushed the selector button on the puck, and found all of the settings for front, center, rear etc to be at the middle. So I bumped those all up a couple of notches, and now am a happy camper! (I turned the bass back down one notch - there is plenty of base in this setup.)I started a game, and the sound is true 5.1 surround, and much better than my old Turtle Beach headset.A word about switching from speakers to headphones and back. I created a shortcut to the control panel sound app (open control panel, right-click on "sound," then on "create shortcut"). To switch from one to the other, I just use that shortcut, click either speaker or headset, then "set default," and I'm done. I have y-connectors to use both, but I'm going to stick with the USB puck.I haven't used the mic, so can't comment on that.So I'd give this headset 4.5 stars for the sound, and take off 0.5 for the setup issues. I think they are clearly worth the money.

Bought these headphones after I Had some trittons AX pro, and they were horrible. These On the other hand are amazing.The are quite heavy compared to your cheaper headset, such as turtle beaches and other cheaper headsets, however you are getting true 5.1 sound. They are made out of entire plastic, but it thick plastic, if it ever breaks across the headband i will be surprised, you get the music dock which enables you to turn all the speakers up and down, but really if you playing a game where your using 5.1 sound then you will be only needing to change the base other wise it is out of proportion and you will be hearing things behind you when they are actually in front of you.I looked at other reviews which set the music quality of sound was muddy and not that good, thats a load of rubbish. They are great for music, you can turn the base up and down depending on what song your listening to.It comes with earcups which are replaceable, which is great, you have the soft cushion, and the noise cancelling leather ones, they are not so easy to change becuase it only comes with one cup inside, so you have to pull the fabric off the other one and squeeze it around, not so easy when you first are trying to find out which one you want to use.The Microphone quality is ok, but thats it. Dont get me wrong it not bad, but when your paying this much then I really want a good microphone as its one of the most important parts.The Software it comes with wont install on my computer anymore but when it did, it was OK, you could turn up the monitoring ( so you can hear yourself speak through the noise canceling) however you can turn it up that much. Also in the software you can make yourself sound like a duck and other farm yard animals which I think is gimmicky.The Headphones are comfortable and are padded on the top however all the weight of the headphones in consecrated on this point and can get a little uncomfortable after long periods of time.

Going from the Tritton 510 hd a or what ever they are called there is a big noticable difference all round. 1 the comfprt on thse things is unbelievable with the cloth type ear cups just wow. 2 The sound directional when in 5.1 is amazing . Not tried stereo in these but why would you I would say. The quality is amazing in either mpde dual usb or via a decent sound card to even beat the usb quality. The only thing I found bad compared this is to my pc 510's is the bass wasnt as goos but it was still good its just compared to my old headset.For settings make sure to have classical equalizer for best quality I found and surroundax enabled plus check in windows for quality setting make sure you have to highest just cause its always best same with mic

one ear stopped workingthen the microphone stopped working, installed new drivers to make it work again (thankfully)lots of bass to be herd!microphone again is very quietear cups wiggle connecting to the headband

just perfect in most ways apart from 1it is a little to heavy and if you lean your head back it can fall offbut other than that its the best headset i have owned to date

Very comfortable, loud, 3d positioning is very good in games. The only problem I have had is when using usb the 5.1 mode disables the Mic. Apparently this is a common problem with all Usb 5.1 headsets. Using analog connection solves this though.