Hey all,

It's been a while. I picked up some new sound type of stuff since the last time i did one of these blog posts. First was a HT Omega Claro 2 sound card (link below). I had been looking for something that would make my PC games and Music sound great and also do good positional audio for console games since i have them all clustered together on my office desk with their sound running into my pc's inputs. This was great. Lots of options for expanded stereo and surround including Dolby Headphone and Pro Logic II ex so this card was pretty much the answer to my techie prayers. To top it all off, i picked up on sale for stupid cheap from my local Micro Center for $60. When i checked other retailers, it was easily 2-3 times that price.

http://www.htomega.com/claro2.html

Since i put that in, it's sounded great but it also cast into stark relief how bad my headphones were. I've been using Turtle Beach headphones for the past several years because they've been comfortable and sounded ok but lately they'd been sounding hollow and lifeless so i started looking around. I came dangerously close to spending a lot of money on some Audio Technica M50's after several recommendations but after browsing my local Sam Ash and doing some product research i discovered a true budget gem in the Samson SR850. From the moment i first tried them, i was truly wowed at how rich they sounded. I wanted to try them with a game so i pulled out my laptop and tried them with diablo 3. My current game was in Act 3 beginning so it's the part where you're fighting on the castle wall. I noticed sounds i'd never heard before in the game and what was more interesting is that i felt like i was able to take in more audio at once as one sound wasn't overpowering the other subtle ones. These ran me $50 but they've easily replaced my Turtle Beaches for anything except talking to Xbox Live people which, let's face it, i don't really care to do much any more but link below if you wanna check them out yourself.

http://www.samsontech.com/samson/products/headphones/sr-series/sr850/