Digital Trends

Ezonics ESound 5.1 February 25th, 2004 | by Jeff Fila

Room for Improvement

While the ESound did impress us with its handling of bass and its ability to present immersive sounds, there are a few features that could be improved upon.

First, the sound level was extremely high with the ESound when initially plugged in. Comfortable levels with our speakers and stereo headphones became unbearably loud and distorted with the ESound. Simple adjustments in the Windows audio properties fixed this, but it would be nice if the ESound included an inline volume adjustment. Even a $20 Altec-Lansing gaming headset we had lying around the office had inline volume and mute controls.

As mentioned earlier, the ESound headphones pay too much attention to the low range sounds. We had to tweak our Windows and media player settings to lower the bass in order for the highs and mids to not be drowned out.

While it's great that the ESound don't require any software to work, it would be nice if an audio management suite was developed. There is no setting in Windows for “5.1 surround sound headphones” to be found. We used the “5.1 surround sound speakers” setting and that worked, but many users may not know enough to change this setting. Since Windows defaulted to using a two-channel headphone setup, users may think that the product isn't doing what it is supposed to.

That point leads us to another issue. The manual included really doesn't go into how to use the headphones. It shows how to install, which is pretty easy since most modern operating systems see it as a plug-and-play device, but it doesn't say what to do next. In order to have 5.1 surround sound turned on, you need to go to your audio settings and actually select it in Windows. We weren't sure where to do such a thing on our Mac with OS X Panther. An explanation of how to properly use the device and get the best sound out of movies, music and games would make a lot of sense here.

Another issue, small as it may sound, is that the ESound makes a faint hissing noise when you are wearing them with no music or audio playing. Of course you normally wouldn't wear them for extended periods of time without listening to something, but sometimes you just want to mute to think more clearly while typing an e-mail. The hissing is annoying and you can hear even more noise when the hard drive is accessed.

The final issue we had with the ESound was the price. For $149, we'd expect the product to be a bit more polished and not have the issues we mentioned above. Inline controls, better documentation, a software package, and a few refinements would go a long way towards justifying that price. While normally price doesn't affect reviews at Designtechnica, in this case, in light of the above mentioned issues, the price dropped the review score by one point.

Another thing we'd like to mention, which has no bearing on the score of this review, is that since Ezonics is marketing the ESound to gamers, we'd love to see a future revision that includes a microphone.

Conclusion

Overall, the ESound did a good job of producing actual surround sound in supported movies and games. Stereo music also sounded good, and even games without 5.1 surround sound audio benefited from the ESound solution.

Bass response was excellent, but at times too much and had to be turned down. With a few refinements, Ezonics would have a hard-to-beat product.

Six-channel sound in gaming is a reality and Ezonics has done a great job bringing that reality to a headset. We look forward to future versions that address our concerns but definitely think the ESound is a great start.