How's It Sounding?

It seems that if you don’t have a Turtle Beach headset, you are a loser and cannot call yourself a modern day console gamer.  Call me a loser then, because I don’t have any.  I have the alternative: a game chair.

When I first heard the name “Turtle Beach”, I thought it was an Xbox Live Arcade game or something.  After all: who would think that something with a name like that would go on your head?  Well I started using sound localization before it was cool.  Anyone remember the old X-Rocker game chair (about $145)?  I had one of the original ones from back in the day.  It’s so old, I only found one picture of it after searching for an hour.

It was a great little 2.1 chair.  There were two 4.5 inch speakers on the left and right side of the chair with a 6 inch sub-woofer in the back.  My chair was trashed by the time 2012 was ending.  It was torn to shreds, the wood holding the hinges broke, and the right speaker wires were being held to the speaker with fun tack.  However, this thing is what lead me to having a 76 win streak in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

In the one versus one (Cage Match), I would always win, and people would always say I was cheating.  I was just using the pre Turtle Beach sound localization.  With a left and right speaker right behind your head on either side, hearing where someone was coming from was simple! 

That was then.  What about now?  Things have changed.  First off: the retirement of my original one.  I don’t throw things away, ESPECIALLY electronics.  I strip everything possibly useful off and toss the rest.  Needless to say, I have a complete 2.1 system, at least 30 screws, a handful of “L” brackets, and some steel rods.  Oh yes; and a bag of dirty rocks.  Apparently someone thought it was a good idea to weigh the front of the chair down with actual dirty rocks.  I was shocked to find this, but talk about cost effective to make.

I now have the new chair which seems to go by either V-Rocker or X-Rocker depending on what piece of paper you are looking at that comes with it.  Everything is now smaller.  The RCAs are gone and replaced by a standard TRS jack, it can be wireless, the subwoofer is down to 4 inches, and the other two speakers are hidden, and it sounds like crap.

The other chair had a well balanced yet fixed EQ.  This chair is all highs and mud.  Smaller speakers narrow what mid bands actually come through, and a smaller sub allows low-end-harmonics to muck its way though.  Slammed, EQed to all hell, and small.  Well at least it’s light.  I guess they left the rocks out of this one.

The pros?  Well the sound localization is a bit better.  The speakers are not pointing away from you like the original one.  They are now pointing forward.  The cost is down to about $80 depending on where you look, and it is smaller, lighter, and easier to store.

Would I recommend this?  YES!  Stay away from the Turtle Beach mind set and be different!  After all, these game chairs can be cheaper anyway.