Scorecard
Digital Trends: 7/10
User Review:
8.0/10
Buy it Now:
The Bottom Line
- USB connection
- real 5.1 channel surround sound
- comfortable fit
- Overpowering bass
- no inline controls
- poor documentation
Overall, the ESound did a great job of producing actual surround sound in supported movies and games.
The Review
By Jeff Fila
Ezonics brings true six-channel surround sound to headphones with their ESound 5.1, featuring a USB connection and six individual sound chambers.
Summary
Overall, the ESound did a good job of producing actual surround sound in supported movies and games. Stereo music also sounded good, and even games without 5.1 surround sound audio benefited from the ESound solution.
Bass response was excellent, but at times too much and had to be turned down. With a few refinements, Ezonics would have a hard-to-beat product.
Six-channel sound in gaming is a reality and Ezonics has done a great job bringing that reality to a headset. We look forward to future versions that address our concerns but definitely think the ESound is a great start.
evolving and we’re currently on the cusp of another evolution. With games
becoming more and more immersive on the graphics side, the next logical step is
digital surround sound.
video games are just starting to support 3D positional audio. There are many
5.1, 6.1 and even 7.1 channel sound cards and speaker sets on the market today,
and now we are starting to see surround sound headphones.
fairly new concept that is getting a lot of exposure lately. Several companies
have come out with 5.1 channel headphones, with most of them being an analog
solution requiring three separate plugs to carry the signal.
this new computer audio market with their ESound 5.1 surround sound headphones.
The ESound headphones have an MSRP of $149 dollars but we’ve seen them on the
Web for as little as $99.
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The ESound 5.1 channel headphones from
Ezonics.
Design and Function
The design of the ESound 5.1 surround headphones by Ezonics is quite different than the others. The ESound utilizes a USB connection with an inline 5.1 decoder so a 5.1 channel sound card is not needed – in fact, a sound card isn’t even needed at all. It decodes six-channel audio from games or movies that are compatible with the AC3 or AC97 standards. USB has some great advantages over the analog solutions, including the fact that you don’t have to unplug your speakers to get the ESound to work. Other six-channel solutions require three inputs – front, rear and sub – and unless you have two of each input you have to unplug your speakers in order to listen to headphones. Since most new computers have a USB port in the front, you can just leave your analog speakers plugged in and easily connect to a USB port.
To get real six-channel sound, the ESound incorporates three independent sound chambers on each side, a design which is patented in several countries including the U.S., Canada, Australia and the E.U. The chambers are oriented so that sound is coming from the direction that it was meant to come from.
Weighing in at about five ounces, the ESound headphones are light and comfortable. The earpieces are made of a soft pleather material with an almost rubberized foam feel to them. However, while we found them to be quite comfortable, they may be a bit on the small side for some people. The earpieces also did a good job of blocking out external sounds.
The unit is an over-the-head design and there are two bands that connect the earpieces together. The headband is flexible and adjustable, which makes it easy to find a good fit, even for the largest of craniums.
With a 10-foot cord, the ESound headphones should reach just about anywhere. We found the cord to be actually too long at times as it got wound around legs and chairs and entangled with other wires, however, we’d much prefer a cord that is too long than too short.
Inline on the cord is the on-board surround sound engine. It is about 4-feet from the USB plug, which makes it so the weight of the unit is not pulling on the headphones. Inside this unit is where all the magic happens. The sound processing unit is about four inches long and features a red-LED that turns on and illuminates the Ezonics logo when plugged into a USB port.
Because of the USB interface and the on-board processing, the ESound is plug-and-play compatible with Mac OSX and Windows XP, 2000, ME, or 98SE. Windows 98SE requires a driver, but the other operating systems work right out of the box.
We tested the ESound using a Compaq Presario 2.4GHz Pentium 4 laptop, a home-built system based on an AMD Athlon XP 2800 Barton and nForce2 motherboard, and an Apple G5 1.6GHz. The PCs were both loaded with Windows XP and configuring the ESound was as easy as plugging it in and waiting a few seconds for the drivers to install. The Apple G5 was just as easy to install, however, we didn’t have any Mac games that support 5.1 audio and QuickTime, Apple’s default DVD player, also does not support Dolby Digital audio.
We really wanted to take the processing unit and the earpieces apart to get some pictures and a better understanding of what’s going on in there, but they were put together so well that we felt we’d break the unit if we tried too hard. Ezonics did provide us with a stock photo to use and it clearly shows the separate sound chambers.
Inside the ESound headhpones. Note the three distinctive sound chambers.
Usage and Testing
Testing the ESound was a lot of fun. We watched movies, played games and listened to a lot of music. We compared our ESound headphones to the Koss TD-80s and a set of Logitech Z5300 six-channel speakers.
The Koss TD-80s are a good pair of low-cost, upper-end headphones. They are a bit on the heavy side and feature booming bass that sometimes overpowers the highs, but they are recognized for overall quality and their on-board volume adjustments.
While regular two-speaker headphones can at times simulate a 3D environment, we were very impressed with how much better the ESound was at delivering true surround. Ezonics is marketing the ESound at gamers, so first we tried them with PC games. There are a few games out now with 5.1 channel sound and many more on the way.
Dolby Digital Gaming
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne was the first game we tried. The game features Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and a lot of deep bass from Payne’s deep voice, dark background music and gunshots. We had to make some adjustments at first because the bass was overpowering, but once properly adjusted, the ESound did not disappoint – the audio was full and clear and the experience was decidedly better than the regular stereo headphones. It was easy to pinpoint where a voice or gunshot was coming from. The game doesn’t really have too many environmental sounds besides weather effects and items being knocked over to the ground.
One particular scene in the game did a great job of proving that we were indeed listening to six-channel audio. While walking through an apartment complex looking for bad guys, as Payne is constantly doing, there was an open window in a hallway. It was raining out and the rain was coming down hard. Walking near the window, we could hear the rain get louder and louder and the sound was definitely coming from straight ahead. Turning around to go down the hallway, the sound could easily be heard to be behind Payne, and when enemies appeared ahead, there was an obvious distinction between what noises were coming from ahead and what originated behind Payne.
We then tried the demo for the upcoming first-person-shooter Far Cry. The ESound headphones really showed their strength with this game. The environment in Far Cry is like night and day compared to Max Payne 2. In fact, it is night and day. While Max Payne 2 is dark and gloomy and almost every scene takes place at night, the Far Cry demo takes place on a bright day on an island in the South Pacific.
There are ambient sounds to be found everywhere on the island. From birds chirping in the distance to enemies talking up ahead of you, there are subtle and not-so-subtle sounds in every direction. With both the Esound and the Logitech speakers, you could really tell in what direction sounds were coming from.
One of the best examples of this was the ocean waves splashing up on the beaches of the island. With the ESound headphones on, you can easily hear the waves behind you when the ocean is at your back. Turning around, you can hear the difference when the waves crash in front of you or to the sides. The experience was very similar to what we heard with the Logitech Z5300s.
We also tested to see if we were able to tell from what direction sounds were coming from with our eyes closed. While nowhere as clear-cut as when viewing the video, we were definitely able to pick out sounds coming from different directions – much more so than with the stereo headphones. If anything, this test at least confirmed that the combination of 3D graphics and positional audio together is what makes the most immersive environments.
Pass The Popcorn
Next, we tested the ESound headphones while watching, and listening intently to, The Matrix: Revolutions, Saving Private Ryan, and several other films with a lot of action and Dolby Digital sound.
The Normandy scene in Saving Private Ryan was almost as intense watching it on our 15.4″ laptop screen with the ESound headphones as it was in the theater. The sound of bullets whizzed by your head from every direction and explosions were thunderous and deep. Similar experiences were noted in The Matrix, where the action scenes had many 3D positional audio elements to them, as well as the dialogue.
Using several software DVD players, the six-channel audio worked well and did a great job positioning the source.
Music, movies and games all benefit from the six-chamber design of the ESound 5.1.
The Bass That Booms
The last test for the ESound was listening to a wide array of music. While the music wouldn’t help us determine the accuracy of 5.1 channel audio, it did help compare how the USB device handles a range of frequencies. We used both Winamp 5 and Windows Media Player 9, and listened to MP3 tracks ripped with Exact Audio Copy and encoded with the LAME encoder using the alt-preset settings with variable bit rate.
At first, our Winamp player had been set to use the “Rock” equalizer preset and the music sounded horrible. The rock setting has just too much bass and the ESound was thumping the bass and drowning out the rest of the music. Our stereo headphones and Logitech speakers had previously sounded fine with this setting. Tweaking the settings for a while and ultimately settling on the “Ska” equalizer setting resulted in the ESound sounding crisp, clear, and balanced.
In testing all of the Winamp presets and playing around with the equalizer, it was obvious that the ESound emphasizes the bass way too much. Mids and highs weren’t terrible, but with the wrong settings, they were drowned out or distorted and unfortunately it took a bit of tweaking to find that right setting.
We listened to a wide range of tracks – including Korn’s “Y’all Want a Single” which features a ton of deep and fast bass and the growling and screaming vocals from singer Jon Davis. The ESound, and our ears, were overpowered by the bass on the “rock” setting, but bringing the bass down a bit made it sound excellent.
Another song that stood out in the ESound headphones was Pearl Jam’s “Love Boat Captain” which also features a good range of vocals and instrumentation. The spectrum of tones came across clean and powerful.
Room for Improvement
While the ESound did impress us with its handling of bass and its ability to present immersive sounds, there are a few features that could be improved upon.
First, the sound level was extremely high with the ESound when initially plugged in. Comfortable levels with our speakers and stereo headphones became unbearably loud and distorted with the ESound. Simple adjustments in the Windows audio properties fixed this, but it would be nice if the ESound included an inline volume adjustment. Even a $20 Altec-Lansing gaming headset we had lying around the office had inline volume and mute controls.
As mentioned earlier, the ESound headphones pay too much attention to the low range sounds. We had to tweak our Windows and media player settings to lower the bass in order for the highs and mids to not be drowned out.
While it’s great that the ESound don’t require any software to work, it would be nice if an audio management suite was developed. There is no setting in Windows for “5.1 surround sound headphones” to be found. We used the “5.1 surround sound speakers” setting and that worked, but many users may not know enough to change this setting. Since Windows defaulted to using a two-channel headphone setup, users may think that the product isn’t doing what it is supposed to.
That point leads us to another issue. The manual included really doesn’t go into how to use the headphones. It shows how to install, which is pretty easy since most modern operating systems see it as a plug-and-play device, but it doesn’t say what to do next. In order to have 5.1 surround sound turned on, you need to go to your audio settings and actually select it in Windows. We weren’t sure where to do such a thing on our Mac with OS X Panther. An explanation of how to properly use the device and get the best sound out of movies, music and games would make a lot of sense here.
Another issue, small as it may sound, is that the ESound makes a faint hissing noise when you are wearing them with no music or audio playing. Of course you normally wouldn’t wear them for extended periods of time without listening to something, but sometimes you just want to mute to think more clearly while typing an e-mail. The hissing is annoying and you can hear even more noise when the hard drive is accessed.
The final issue we had with the ESound was the price. For $149, we’d expect the product to be a bit more polished and not have the issues we mentioned above. Inline controls, better documentation, a software package, and a few refinements would go a long way towards justifying that price. While normally price doesn’t affect reviews at Designtechnica, in this case, in light of the above mentioned issues, the price dropped the review score by one point.
Another thing we’d like to mention, which has no bearing on the score of this review, is that since Ezonics is marketing the ESound to gamers, we’d love to see a future revision that includes a microphone.
Conclusion
Overall, the ESound did a good job of producing actual surround sound in supported movies and games. Stereo music also sounded good, and even games without 5.1 surround sound audio benefited from the ESound solution.
Bass response was excellent, but at times too much and had to be turned down. With a few refinements, Ezonics would have a hard-to-beat product.
Six-channel sound in gaming is a reality and Ezonics has done a great job bringing that reality to a headset. We look forward to future versions that address our concerns but definitely think the ESound is a great start.
