Performance
Testing a piece of hardware such as the Sirus is always great because it is an excuse to play games, watch movies, and listen to music while working. I ran the headset initially through a myriad of surround sound and bass tests to monitor how well the directional sound performed and test the feedback of the subwoofer. Every test was dead on when it came to which angle was being played, and the bass was impressive enough that I could take the set off and watch the speaker vibrate through the plastic.
I then happily put the set on for some gaming, favoring the first-person shooter genre but also felt I had to play several types of games, you know, just to be sure. One of the runs that really stood out to me was Left 4 Dead 2's Cold Stream campaign, the opening of which follows a running river and meets with the survivors to start the level. At different twists and turns in the river there was waves and white caps beating against the environment, which I could as I approached in front of me and as it passed, I heard it eventually drown out behind me. It was a great example of the Sirus's directional ability.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Sirus has power. Even now as I type with a little soft music playing, I'm using the set as external speakers just sitting on my desk and can hear fine. To put the speakers to the test however, I turned all volume controls to the maximum, put the headset on, and popped in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. I had watched this movie for the first time when I set up my entertainment center's surround sound, and living in an apartment I wasn't able to pump up the amazing music and great sound effects of this movie to the level I really wanted to. This time, there was nothing stopping me except a little concern for my ear drums. The Sirus performed beautifully, and loud, without and distortion at its highest volumes as the movie hit some pretty high pitches. Though this was my favorite test to talk about, I also ran the set through several other soundtracks and games to be sure.
The Tactical Mixing Console is a nice addition to the package, creating more of a surround sound system feeling that allows customization without launching the software. As mentioned, this controller can be used to mute the speakers and microphone with the touch of a button, as well as cycle through the different channels to adjust their volume via the navigation wheel.
This could come in handy especially in-game. An example Cooler Master uses is while playing a first-person shooter, a gamer may want to turn down the center volume (drowning out the gunfire) and give boost to the remaining channels in order to better hear footsteps from approaching enemies, which is fantastic for snipers. This can all be achieved from the Tactical Mixing Console without loading any sort of software.
Our review sample's navigation wheel seems to be backwards however. Wheel's we have seen in the past, or even on other stereo equipment, turn to the right to increase volume and to the left to decrease; in this case, it is the opposite. It's not a huge flaw and one that is easy to get used to, but will probably cause more problems if or when you switch to a navigation wheel that has typical orientation. Again, our sample is a pre-production model, and this may be different when the Sirus is released on a large scale.
The microphone comes through clear as day, while setting up the receive volume in both Steam and through Windows, the Sirus is the first headset with which I actually had to turn down from maximum. The microphone is sturdy yet a has a little flexibility to it, so you can bend it how you'd like and it will keep that shape. An indicator both on the Tactical Mixing Console and an LED on the microphone itself show when mute is enabled.
