Tritton Detonator Xbox 360 Headset Review

When it came to testing the Detonator I tried to pick games where I would be able to get plenty of team chat going, or at the very least a solid Xbox live party, first firing up Halo Reach from some Team Swat, Big Team Battle and Firefight, the first thing I noticed was how different the menu screen sounded on the game, distant war noises, rain and wind were all crystal clear, I normally only hear the ambient music on my tv speakers, so this was pretty suprising just how much detail there was, a good start then.

In game, the sound was incredible, deep bass and treble, but a really heavy push on the mid ranges, giving the sound a really warm tone, now I personally like this in my sound, but its not to everyones taste, most people seem to set EQ to cut a chunk out of the mid range, much like a lot of modern rock / metal bands do, think of heavy mid ranges as the warmer tones of classic rock, opposed to the punchy sound of a lot of new bands, that’s basically what this headset does.  I still think this is a great thing though, giving warmth to the sound really brings a lot of the sound to life and makes it feel more natural opposed to just going for a thumping sound and an unrealistic wow factor, but it really is a matter of preference.

Sound quality was sublime, completely distortion free and clear at low volume and as close to maximum as I could dare to try, the drivers in the headphones are really powerful and I didn’t care to max them out for fear of causing some damage to my ears, but being able to adjust the game and chat volume independent from each other using the in-line remote is really handy, when you find a game getting a little too crazy you can tune the volume down and leave your yappy friends loud and clear.

Next I fired up Forza 4, the tone on these headphones really added to the engine noises, I always race using the helmet cam, with no in game music or any HUD options enabled, so having that rich warm tone really brought the game to life.

You can also connect this to your phone or MP3 player to use them as normal headphones, but it just didn’t seem right to me, its fantastic that you can do it, the sound quality is pretty decent too, but they might look a bit much if you were to wear them while sat on the bus.

As for the microphone, I really don’t know what to make of this one, the sound quality on the speakers in brilliant, the sound quality of the microphone is just as fantastic, giving loud and clear audio way above the standard Microsoft headset, but its some of the Trittons other features that almost spoiled the effect it has.  The perfect fit of the headphones blocks out nearly all out side noise, even more so when your gaming and you have the games audio playing in your ears, someone could be sat right in front of you and you wouldn’t hear a thing, this is great for immersion, but it comes at a cost… you can’t hear your self talking, the whole time I played my friend at halo, he was complaining that I was talking too quiet, but I was really self aware that I was talking loud, I of course couldn’t tell if I was or not.

The SVM button does offer a great solution to this, but again this came at a price, it’s ultra sensetive, so much so that I didn’t know my face made so much noise! every tiny bit of breath, click and pop noise of my tongue moving around in my mouth or the sound of my finger nails scratching my beard all got picked up in stunning clarity, albeit a clarity I don’t want or need.  Talking only amplified the effect, no one thinks “they sound like that” when they hear a recording of their own voice, but I found the effect most disorientating, as you think that what you can hear from the microphone is what your Xbox live party can hear, but they can’t, they still get noise reduction and you just hear the raw amplified audio, it wouldn’t be so bad if you could adjust the SVM volume or sensitivity, but you can’t.

Now this isn’t all bad, it just takes a little getting used to, you can either live with “maybe” shouting your head off, or have the SVM on and feel like your talking to your self, I don’t want to mark the headset down for the SVM as its a feature you just don’t see on a lot of headsets and even if it is too sensitive, it does its job superbly, but at least its optional as its not going to be to everybody’s taste.