Review on 🎧 Ultimate Gaming Experience: ROCCAT Syn Pro Air Wireless Lightweight PC Gaming Headset with 3D Audio Surround Sound, RGB AIMO Lighting, and All-Day Battery Life - Black by Satish Tegan

Roccat, the arm of Turtle Beach's respected gaming headsets, has just introduced the new Syn Pro Air Headset. The marketing is a little odd, as it screams immersive sound and cool lighting effects, but doesn't give much information on compatibility or how it actually creates that immersive sound field. So I just had to get it and try it myself. First the basics: They're designed for a frequency response of 20Hz to 20kHz and use large 50mm drivers. The construction is mostly plastic, but they are well built and durable. They're a lot lighter than they look and the memory foam ear cushions are very comfortable. I wore them for several hours and my ears didn't hurt. Okay, now for some specifics: 1) You only connect using a 2.4GHz wireless dongle (included). Plug the dongle into the PC and they will be connected automatically. 2) It looks like the dongle and software are only compatible with PC. Tested with Windows.3) Charged via USB-C. A charging cable is included, which also includes a USB-A to USB-C adapter should you need one for the charging side of the cable. 4) The microphone plugs into the side of the headphones (if you want to use it). You can flip the microphone down (on) or up (mute/off). The quality of the microphone is very good.5) The headphones have volume, speech volume and on/off controls.6) The headphones light up. On the sides are LEDs that can take on different colors and rotate in a light show. As a user, you don't see any of this. This is mainly done to impress people on the other end of the video chat or other people in the room. Good Good. If you install the dongle and plug in your headphones, the sound is generally decent. But there are no volumetric effects. They are disabled by default. You MUST install the Roccat NEON software to activate it. Go to their website to find and download it. Ironically they don't tell you to do it in big bold because without that software these headphones go nowhere in terms of full surround sound. Once you've installed the software, you'll have access to the setup menu (see photo), including the ability to enable surround modes. Turn on the surround mode (you can select music/video/games) and suddenly it's very different. The sound in surround mode is quite immersive and the soundstage is huge. You can switch between surround and stereo mode using the app, and once you get into surround sound you won't go back to things like gaming or most videos. The manufacturer is quite stingy when it comes to the details of how it creates 3D/3D effects. My guess is that they're looking for phase information and decoding it, but that's just a guess. Musically I tried them out with Synergy's track Legacy from their first album Electronic Realizations for Rock Orchestra. I chose this track because it was encoded with quadraphonic (4-channel) sound when it was recorded and this encoding is present on all master tapes. As such, the version on streaming sites is still encoded in quadraphonic (QS) format, which provides lots of phase information and helps manage a wide soundstage. And the headphones in this regard do not disappoint. The sound has been greatly improved. I also tested the headphones in cinema mode with Dolby Atmos demo videos. Again, it was great hearing things that were supposed to be above or below me, sounds placed in those areas. So the 3D effects are definitely fun. How is the sound quality? Bass is good, voluminous and controlled, mids are clean and clear. High Pretty Goose. That's fine for videos or gaming, but will quickly drive you crazy when you're listening to music. I had to go into the equalizer and reset some of the highs to allow for longer use while listening to music. Audiophile headphones with a flat frequency response are not. But then again, they're not sold as audiophile headphones. Overall: Pros: ** Really fun immersive 3D simulation ** Very comfortable ** Good construction ** High quality microphone ** Cute lighting effects that might impress the neighbors Cons ** No Bluetooth and 2.4Ghz adapter, seems to be made only for PC ** Although the sound is impressive out of the box, it is very happy with the high frequencies and you will have to use the equalizer if you mainly listen to music. Given the list price of these headphones, which puts them on par with other gaming headphones, including Turtle Beach models with Bluetooth, you'll need to decide how much you care about aesthetics and whether they give you the perfect level of comfort. . But unless you're one of those people who suffers from an acute "what if" case, you'll be quite happy with it for its main intended purpose (playing games and watching videos on the PC platform).