Issues

A small issue that I had was that it wasn't very clear how to plug the microphone into the headset. I had to rotate it after my first attempt, but eventually got it to go in correctly. A marking on the end of the mic would go a long way to clearing up this minor issue.

Unfortunately, the issues don't stop there. Although the sound was great on my home PC for mostly everything, any time I fired up a game, I would get a constant buzzing noise in the background. Distracting to say the least; it almost drowned out all of the subtle sounds that you need to hear when playing an FPS. I was using the LTB's on my A8V's on-board sound, so I figured that the Realtek chip wasn't doing it justice. So next I installed an SBLive! 5.1 card I had laying around. The sound was a bit clearer than the on-board Realtek, but the buzzing noise was still there whenever I started up a game. Nothing had changed on the issue between the Realtek & the SBLive!, so I thought, well, maybe it's my whole setup. My friend then brought over his Theatre 6's, through which you could hear no buzzing whatsoever. As a final step to make sure it wasn't something I was doing wrong, I had him take the LTB's home & plug them into his Audigy ZS2. Even on this completely different setup, the buzzing persisted during gameplay.

At this point, I figured it was time for an email to LTB to get their input on the matter. This was their reply:

"We are sorry to hear about the static you are experiencing.  We have had some reports of this and it has been traced down to noise on the specific USB port.  The solution has been to use a separately powered USB hub.  By using the hub, any and all "noise" from the computer, its fans, and other parts is eliminated.  Please note that this problem is not common and only happens on a small handful of machines. There have also been cases where the noise is caused by the power line in which case a line filter is all that is needed to correct the problem."

Let me get this straight: you want me to use a USB hub to power the headphone box?!? This is where the importance of what I was saying about the lack of proper shielding on the leads from the box earlier hit home. To give them the benefit of the doubt, I plugged the USB power cable into the front panel connection, but still no dice. I even used one of those ferrite clip-ons that are supposed to reduce electrical interference on both the main cable & the USB power cable to no avail.

Now, both my friend & I have A8V's so I figured that maybe this board was part of the "small handful of machines" they were talking about. I then brought the headphones into work, & plugged them into my A7N8X Deluxe: bingo. No noise. Excellent sound all the way around.

Bottom line: I'd have a hard time recommending these headphones to anyone until they come up with some proper shielding for all of their cables. 

They're excellent headphones, sound great, are very comfortable, & I would certainly buy them over the Theatre 6's because of their smaller size & integrated microphone. All that being said, however; you could buy these headphones & end up getting the short end of the stick if your system falls into that "small handful" category. The good news is that it really shouldn't take much for LTB to get these headphones up-to-snuff.

They've got an excellent product at a great price on their hands; it only needs a bit of polishing-up, & it'll be good to go.

**UPDATE**

LTB has sent me their 5v AC power adapter for testing to see if it would resolve my noise issues on my PC at home. I took the AC-97-M's home for a test drive, & instead of plugging the USB cable into a USB port, I plugged it into the power adapter, the other end of which then went into a regular AC outlet. I'm happy to report that the use of the adapter completely got rid of all previous noise issues. LTB will be offering this adapter as an accessory only, so you'll still have to buy the headphones first, see if they work, & if they don't, order the adapter. Kind of a round-about way of doing things, but at least you'll be guaranteed great sound quality in the end.