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Arctic Cooling Arctic Sound P531 5.1 USB Headset Review

Audio/Others by stefan @ 2010-09-29

The Arctic Sound P531 is a 5.1 USB headset from Artic Cooling, very helpful in games which require 3D sound positioning, but also movies or sound files that have multi-channel sound content, and produces a very nice bass. The casing is built mostly from plastic, but does not give us a cheap feel and thanks to that it is very light. The software can even transform the stereo sound which we listen to the most into 5.1 so we can use the surround feature everywhere.

Conclusive Thoughts

Conclusive Thoughts

Installing the software that came with the headset was a breeze and it only required a system restart. Right after that, the AC logo appeared in the tray and by clicking it we can directly access the software interface.

Being able to transform any stereo sound into 5.1 material is very useful, especially when listening a lot of music or other content on Youtube, but also Winamp.

To test the headset, I have watched the Iron Man 2 DVD with 5.1 content; all the audio channels sounded good and I was able to set successfully the volume for each speaker independently. The bass was very lively and I could feel the cups vibrate during some movie sequences.

I have tested the headset in CounterStrike: Source, but before entering the game I made sure that all the channels like Front, Rear, Subwoofer and Center were set to the same volume levels; the sounds were delivered accurately and I could hear from which direction some of the enemies were shooting. In Darksiders the sound was also rich and I could hear a lot of bass during some of the game sequences.

To test out the microphone, I have started a Skype conversation; the person I was talking to said that there were no problems hearing me and just to make sure I have also made a Skype test call.

One of the advantages of having an USB headset is that we do not need to have a 5.1 sound card and the extra analog cables are not needed anymore. Also, the analog 5.1 headsets I have tested in the past also had an USB connector, besides the jacks, to supply extra power.

It is unquestionable that the P531 is light and comfortable, but because the cups stay on the ears and not around them; people that are wearing glasses can feel after some time a little sore, because the ear helix will be pressed against the plastic frame of the glasses, that stays around the ear.

The MSRP for this product is about 49,25 Euros, which is impressive considering that we are dealing with a 5.1 headset.

I would like to thank again to Arctic Cooling for making this review possible.

Comment from jmke @ 2010/10/06

thought I recognized those audio config panels, have the same Xear3D chip on an older motherboard.

Comment from Stefan Mileschin @ 2010/10/06

Exactly, they have almost the same software interface and the same effects.

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