Arctis headsets, whats wrong with them specifically?

[iMxmo]

Ive always stayed away from arctis' headset line because of some word i've heard on them being poor audio/value. Also some issues with metal hinges on plastic housing. If any audiophiles would care to explain some flaws in terms of audio with the Arctis series headsets, specifically the 5's 

[somer4ndo]

Yea, not audiophile so can't answer on that front, but the hinges are a real problem which I'm not sure affects the arctis 5s, 85% of the headphones I've seen with this problem have been arctis pros(both wireless and wired, including my own) and the other 15% have been a mix of 7s and 9s, and this problem seems to be very widespread, so I don't know how much I'd trust them to hold up based on the reliability of their higher end products.

[Chris Pratt]

First I'm hearing of this. I have a 7X and a 1, and they both work great for me. No issues ever. I'm no audiophile, but they're $150 and $100, respectively, so I'd imagine it's not going to suit an audiophile. For me, the sound is just fine, though.

[rice guru]

1 hour ago, iCypticx said:

Ive always stayed away from arctis' headset line because of some word i've heard on them being poor audio/value. Also some issues with metal hinges on plastic housing. If any audiophiles would care to explain some flaws in terms of audio with the Arctis series headsets, specifically the 5's 

depends on which you are talking about from a sound value perspective audiophiles who have explored the hobby from a very price to performance perspective irrelevant to sound can list off a ton of headphones that perform better at around the same price range. arctis isn't really that atrocious though razer and Logitech I find to be worse offenders than steel series. from what I remember for the arctis 5 iis it's heavy reliance of 5.1 surround sound software. a good gaming headphone IMO should be able to give you positional audio without software to be acceptable the arctis 5 does not. and without the software on its not great soundstage is pretty bad and imaging also suffers along with it. at the same price or lower than the arctis 5 you have headsets like the cooler master mh 751 who give you positional audio well without the need of surround sound software. arctis 7 is a bit better but starts getting into the price of entry level audiophile headphones in terms of price like the beyerdynamic tygr and fidelio x2 hr, akg k371 and akg k361 if your in eurom akg k602 and 612 then they will have to compete with and if Im sitting playing games competitively I would take any of those pick ove the akg k371 any day. as you go up the price range the same story keeps repeating itself the arctis series isn't total garbage and something like the arctis pro while awful for music for games I can work with it. while it wont perform as well as other things I own I'm good enough at games to not completely depend on sound. the thing with all of us in the audio community is we have explored our options and tried a good amount of gear. as someone who cares about games and music nothing in the arctis line truly cuts it. also another huge contributing factor in this is we like to say if the company makes your keyboards don't buy headphones from them. 

[Poraf]

I'm far from being a hardcore audiophile but I was able to test a friend's Arctis 5 a while back. It's not that they sound horrible but when you begin comparing them with other similarly priced headphones or headsets in terms of sound, they just fall really behind. The sound, to me at least, sounded flat and not the good kind its like the frequencies were all over the place and had little soundstage for a "gaming" headset. I don't want to be too critical but it just has really poor value in terms of sound, which is a shame because I honestly liked how they looked.

[Tigerleon]

12 minutes ago, Poraf said:

I honestly liked how they looked.

Does looks in a headset make them better? 

[Poraf]

9 hours ago, Tigerleon said:

Does looks in a headset make them better? 

depends on who you you ask, but for me, no.

[rice guru]

16 hours ago, Tigerleon said:

Does looks in a headset make them better? 

I definitely bought a pair of headphones cause I thought they looked cool pretty recently lol. Really does depend on who you ask. But aesthetic is definitely a factor that I think most people consider when buying headphones.