Headphone Prices Unwanted Software Hardware Details
Sound Buy
In your headphone roundup ( April 2016 issue), you listed the Kingston HyperX Cloud II Headset at $ 80 from www. hypergaming.com. When checking specifications on the website, I noticed the price is listed at $100. The lesser HyperX Cloud Gaming Headset is listed at $ 80.
Are there any headphones of this quality with a mic at $ 80, or will I have to beg for $20 more from someone?
– Brian Kelly STAFF WRITER ZAK STOREY RESPONDS: Pricing changes all the time— sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. When we were writing the group test, the Kingston HyperX Cloud IIs were available for $ 80 on a special deal. Generally, in our reviews, the link is to point people toward the manufacturer’s website, and the price is from the cheapest place we can find it online. It’s frustrating, I know; it might make more sense to point toward the reseller, but we have limited space to include every detail, and resellers also change their prices.
If you’re set on getting the Cloud IIs, they’re currently available for $90 from Newegg and Amazon; $10 more but still well worth it. For value for money, they’re absolutely killer. I’ve tested a lot of headphones in this price range, and there’s very few that I’ve enjoyed as much as the Cloud IIs.
However, if you’re after saving a touch more money, it might be worth getting the original Clouds instead; the only difference between the two is the USB dongle, and although it does play around with the EQ a tad, most of the work is done by the headphones themselves. They’re about $ 67 currently.
Remove Bloat
Why does Microsoft (and Apple) feel the need to put applications in the OS that you have to jump through hoops to uninstall? Apps you don’t use, don’t want, and are taking up space you aren’t willing to allocate. In Win 10, you have to go to PowerShell, find the product name, then enter an oblique command to delete it. What do they gain, aside from annoying me? Why can’t they include “Uninstall” in the right- click menu? – Steve G SENIOR EDITOR JARRED WALTON RESPONDS: Often, it’s because the company in question wants to provide a uniform level of software in the OS, so it can always refer to that. It allows the company to say, “Sorry, we aren’t the support line for XYZ; have you tried using our UVW tool?” There’s also a case of feature bloat—the desire to add more value by having the OS do “more” than older systems.
Take Cortana—there are other digital assistants, but Microsoft can say, “You get Cortana for free with Windows 10!” (Or Siri with Apple’s stuff.) And for most users, storage space is basically “free” these days—sure, Windows or OS X might eat up 20GB of storage, but when we’re all running 1TB and larger hard drives, it doesn’t matter. (It’s more of a concern with 256GB SSDs, of course.)
The more nefarious point is data mining. Win10, and Cortana in particular, end up with a lot of potentially useful information about you. The more you use it, the better Microsoft can figure out how to appeal to you when it comes to advertising and such. Simply knowing the apps installed on your smartphone, it’s possible to make a reasonably accurate guess as to your age, gender, race, and income bracket—it will be wrong for some, but it might be pretty close 75 percent of the time. Not every app does data mining, but when you look at the EULA for a typical OS update, there’s potential for many unexpected things to happen—you gave them permission when you clicked the “Accept” button!
What apps are bothering you? Knowing that might help me understand where you’re coming from. Plus, I can mine that data for other useful bits of information, so I can better target our future email exchanges. And if that sounds scary, some of the stuff happening in the world of AI and data mining would really send you scurrying for the hills. Think happy thoughts....
More Equal
I’m confused as to how you came up with the glowing review of the Kingston HyperX Cloud II headset ( April 2016 issue). The reason being a glaring omission in features. I purchased this headset, and while it was comfortable, I found the sound flat for my tastes. I tried to adjust the sound, and found that all settings for this headset
are locked, like not even having tone adjustment. I emailed Kingston, and it confirmed that all sound settings are completely locked. It said: “A possible solution to this is to develop a separate application that can grant users control of the EQ settings with the USB adapter. Now we have explored options such as this, however at this time this is not available.”
Why would anyone choose a $100 gaming headset that they have to write their own software for if they want EQ adjustment, when for the same money, they can buy other headsets that include very polished software, such as the Razer Kraken 7.1 Chroma? It comes with the great Synapse software, which gives you full EQ adjustment, full surround sound configuration, bass boost, sound profiles, and more. All at the same price as the Cloud II. – B. J. Koho EXECUTIVE EDITOR ALAN DEXTER RESPONDS: Headsets are a personal thing. While one reviewer may think a set is too bassy, another may hold that it isn’t bassy enough. It’s partly down to the differences in our ears, and partly down to expectations. To be fair, the general consensus on the Kingston HyperX Cloud II is that it is an awesome headset— it isn’t just us.
As for software equalizers, we avoid those like the plague, as they don’t accurately reproduce the original sound as the artists intended. In fact, in order to provide as equal a field as possible, we used a pair of DACs to ensure we were comparing like for like. We’re not stopping you from running a software EQ, but as we’re trying to give an objective overview of headsets, we wouldn’t go near them.
What really matters is that you’ve found a headset you like. We can point you at one that we like, but if it doesn’t tick your box, you don’t have to stick with it.
More Specifics
The detail and comparison boxes in MaximumPC that cite only Intel CPU numbers are too obscure. This is especially true for comparison boxes that mix different CPUs. We need more details to understand, quickly read, and quickly review later. I am a very long-time reader, and a system builder since 1990.
The Builds section is worthless, as CPU and motherboard numbers are obscure without research. In fact, I don’t read this section anymore, as it doesn’t mean anything to me unless I am buying parts that day, and then I do the research on my own. It doesn’t keep me up to date on current builds.
I read and reread the articles, writing details next to the boxes. Half the time, you don’t have some of the details in the article. You may have the details for each CPU in your heads, but please leave out some of the pithy comments for space to put more CPU details in a larger box. Scott Jorgenson SENIOR EDITOR JARRED WALTON RESPONDS: Thanks for the feedback. We realize listing CPU model numbers alone may not be helpful if you’re not up to speed on CPU names, though that’s part of the point of reading MaximumPC. One of the best resources for finding additional details for any Intel CPU is its ARK pages, where a model number lookup provides any additional details you might need. AMD has a similar resource (not as friendly, IMO) with its Products page.
It’s easy to point at one thing and say, “Leave out some of the pithy comments and put more CPU details in,” but which details are important and which should we leave out? Look at any CPU on Intel’s ARK pages (e.g., i7- 5775C), and you will have enough data to fill an entire page in the magazine. It’s a slippery slope, and for print publications, we’re always going to have to cut something out. Even on the website, we’re more likely to link to the ARK page for additional details rather than reproducing the entire list every time. And if CPUs are bad, motherboards are even worse.
We’d love to provide more information, benchmarks, and so on, but at some point, anyone who wants to know more will have to do the research. If you don’t know that i7- 4790K is a Devil’s Canyon processor, which was basically an optimized version of Haswell (i7- 4770K), and that the K means it’s multiplier unlocked... well, we’ve covered that in the past, and repeating it every time we reference a model number would make for boring and redundant reading.
As for the builds, they’re to get people started, and give an idea of where we currently rank items. Experienced system builders should be able to look at any build and offer several points of critique. If you’re new to the PC scene, the goal is to provide a list of items you could order, put it all together, and it will all fit and work properly.