Altec Lansing AHS602i Gaming Headset

I am a huge fan of music, so a good headset is required to handle anything I can throw at it. The high pitches and loud volume. If I turn it up high and it crackles or sounds scratchy, that’s a sign that I won’t be using the headset for very long. Bad Religion is my personal favorite band, and if you enjoy punk music, you likely already know their music. DJ Tiësto is a legendary trance artist, and one of the most popular DJ’s in the world. Both CD’s being tested have been ripped to MP3 at 320Kbps, an ultra high quality.

To test, I picked a song from each disc, and listened to it with and without the SRS booster. I chose “Los Angeles is Burning” from the Bad Religion album, and it sounded great without the booster. It was a different story when I turned it on though! The song became immediately distorted, and there is no way someone could listen to it very long. I quickly found out though, that this was actually not the boosters fault. The battery I was using has been used before, and therefore was on the brink of dying. Replacing the battery fixed the entire problem, and it sounded amazing with the booster on.

How about the trance album? The song I chose off the Tiësto album was “Solarstone & JES – Like A Waterfall”, which is the one you may have heard in the commercials for the album. It’s a very smooth sounding song, with lots of bass and voice. As I had hoped, the song sounded just as I wanted.. awesome quality. For fun, I turned up the volume within Windows up to Max, and the same for the headset. There was absolutely no distortion whatsoever. I tried a song from another Tiësto album as well, “Traffic”, which is also loaded with a ton of bass. Again, no distortion. I am extremely pleased with the performance of the headset when it comes to music listening!

For movie testing, I chose to use 8 Mile and Gone In Sixty Seconds, a couple of my favorites. In 8 Mile, I played the “The Final Battle” chapter, which has B Rabbit free styling against a Free World member. The reason this is a great chapter for testing, is because it takes place in an echoey basement, where the voices bounce off the walls. For Gone in Sixty Seconds, I played through the various chapters where Nicholas Cage is escaping with Elenor (1967 Shelby Mustang GT 500). Obviously, any great car chase scene makes for good sound testing.

I first watch both sections from each movie without the SRS boost, to mimic regular headphones. The sounds was good, but nothing spectacular. When I played back the scenes again with the SRS booster enabled, I was thoroughly impressed. In 8 Mile, I could not believe how real the sound was.. as if I was truly there. While watching the section, I flipped back from regular to surround numerous times, and could not believe the difference. The same goes for GI60S again, the sound was amazing. The car engine really can get your blood pumping, especially if you have not watched the scene before. Without a doubt, I am very impressed with the headset with movie watching.