ARCTIC P531 TRUE 5.1 Surround Sound USB Professional Gaming PC Headset

Pros: As promised, I am back for an updated review after extended use. You can find my first review below as the first Newegg Customer review for this product.

I cannot express how clear, sharp, and responsive this headset is. It's an experience that cannot be put to words when you configure it correctly (see Other Thoughts).

The Bass levels are a tad weak unless you rebalance the EQ to favor it at least, but some may not like that. The EQ tuner is quite strong as well, but if you need a bit more or less, then on the control panel's Main Settings tab in the Output Device section, click the button there and you can play with the gain of any one speaker even more.

All your other configurations are rather obvious and very much personal preference and there's a WIDE variety of configuration. Best to run a surround sound movie in the background while tuning as a sound sample.

Now, mic quality. The mic is clear, but no noise cancellation. If you want studio quality recording, you need

Cons: As mentioned before, while I don't know if it's still true or not, the drivers on the website were double zipped. Simply enter the first .zip folder and extract the second, but be prepared for potential corruption from downloading a double zipped installer.

Something that came up shortly after posting my original review, is that if you ever cut the power to your PC, or disconnect the headset, the control panel is subsequently disabled. You must reinstall (no need to uninstall, I've done it multiple times now) to enable the control panel again. You'll also have to retune everything back to the way you had it before.

After about a month's use the On-Ear cushion style can be uncomfortable after prolonged use for those who wear glasses. After rubbing the mild discomfort there one day and seeing my fingers come back covered in blood, I got in the habit of wrapping the ear pieces of my frames in paper towels until I could replace my frames with something thinner. Fine now, no pain.

Overall Review: Now, I must reiterate some key points people are missing on how to get the most and highest quality sound possible from this headset.

Installation is smooth: Download and install current drivers from the website - easy to find and do. Driver interface is familiar to those who have used surround sound USB headsets. Enable the 7.1 mixer and tune to 8 channel (formerly suggested 6 channel). Then adjust reverb and EQ to your personal taste. It'll still sound generic until you do one last thing: Open your control panel and open Sound. Select the USB headset and click properties. Then in advanced configure to 24-bit 96Khz. Enjoy!

Also if you are concerned about the glasses thing I experienced, The OZONE Strato headset is nearly identical to the P531, only with seemingly larger ear pads and a solid matte black scheme. May be worth checking out as I'm sure they would sound the same.

Pros: -Great sound quality
-Easily one of the best headsets (or headphones) for the price

Cons: -Very uncomfortable at first
-Low quality microphone (most likely defective)

I originally received and started using the headset on December 23rd and immediately noticed 2 things:
First, the driver/setup CD had several cracks in it and was unusable. Thankfully, this wasn't an issue as I was able to download the same files from their website. Still, I contacted them about this (via email on the 23rd) and received a reply thanking me on the 27th.

The other problem I experienced was that the microphone seemed be very muffled/low quality compared to my old headset (Logitech G330). I sent an email (they don't have live chat/phone support) to technical support on the 24th and still hadn't received a reply by January 4th. I figured I'd give them some time considering it was the holidays, (even though they answered my first email within 3 days) but I tried sending a second email (in the case that they somehow missed the first one) and I still haven't heard back from them at all.

Overall Review: In the case that the headset I received was just a defective unit, this is still worth purchasing (assuming this is an isolated incident).