Initially we had problems using this headphone on the test system's Audigy 2 ZS soundcard, such as severely inconsistent bass levels depending on which direction the source of the bass was coming from. With a little research this seemed to be a common issue for Audigy 2 and X-Fi sound cards from Creative and these headphones. With some tweaking of the bass settings, and turning bass re-direction on, these problems went away and we were left with a wonderful sounding surround experience void of the bass localization issues we experienced initially.

We immediately jumped into Counter Strike: Source and loaded the Test Speaker Settings mode in order to see if we had connected the headset properly and to make sure everything was working. We experienced a reassuringly surround sound experience, proving that surround sound headphones really do work. Closing your eyes, you can easily tell which direction the sound is coming from. The center channel did seemed to have a slight echo sound to it, and the rear channels seemed a little “closer” than the front channels spatially. The bass sounded very good for a set of headphones. A quick test of the microphone settings in Ventrilo voice communication software showed that the built in boom microphone has excellent sound quality, in addition to be easily positioned with it's flexible boom. Now that we had verified that the surround and microphone was working, it was time to drop into a game and try it out.

Detachable boom microphone

Joining a game on De_Dust2 map in Counter Strike: Source the benefit of surround sound was immediately apparent. While the voice of your team mates using in-game voice communication is still played in stereo, all other sounds are played in their glorious surround sound goodness. Gunfire, explosions, footsteps and bomb beeping all are easy to localize. Once you know how easy it is for someone with surround sound to tell where you are by your footsteps, you may be holding down that walk key a bit more to be a little more stealthy. During firefights you'll not only know your getting shot, you'll know exactly where you're being shot from. You won't want to go back to stereo gaming after using these headphones. At times the sound was a bit “tinny” sounding on the center channel, and softer in the rear, but none of this took away from the effectiveness of the surround sound.

Having our fill of Valve software, we decided to load up Battlefield 2 to see how these headphones perform there. We loaded up Strike at Karkand to see how an urban environment sounds with surround headphones. Satisfyingly we had a similar experience as we did in CS:S, with gunfire and vehicle sounds being easily localized. The “tinny-ness” experience in the center channel in CS:S also seemed to happen occasionally in BF2, so this seems to not be game dependent. Further tweaking was not able to fully eliminate this, however it was not particularly distracting, and in the heat of battle was easily forgotten with the satisfaction of having a much better idea of what is going on around you.

In conclusion, we were very impressed with the Medusa 5.1 ProGamer headphones. The benefits of surround sound speakers is fully realized in a small, portable, and comfortable headset. The overall quality of construction of the headphones is excellent (despite it's somewhat flimsy controller), and the number of well thought out features tailored for a gamer who may have to pick up and hit the road with their rig for gaming is exhaustive. Inline controls with a built in amplifier that provides plentiful power, a high quality integrated microphone, and convenient carrying case all make for a solid surround sound gaming experience no matter where you may find yourself gaming, even if you don't plan to take them on the road. With a MSRP of $115, these headphones won't break the bank to get a fully functional surround sound system.