Performance Testing
360-degree photos of me wearing the Plantronics Gamecom 777 7.1 headphones
Subjective Wear Testing
Before I started testing the performance of the Gamecom 777 7.1 headphones I wanted to see how comfortable they were. Needless to say, they were a bit tight for my large head so I had to adjust the bridge to match my head size. This was quick and simple and it was a snug fit around my ears and temples. The ear cups were a bit too large for my taste, but did a good job of isolating me from the rest of my environment. I’m sure the sound will tell me the rest of the story during performance testing.
Test System Configuration
Our PC gaming system is based off the Intel LGA 1366 platform using the following hardware components:
Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R LGA 1366
Processor: Intel i7-920 2.8GHz
Graphics Card: XFX Radeon HD5770 1GB
Memory: OCZ Technology 6GB DDR3-1600 Triple-Channel
Storage: Western Digital 150GB Raptor SATA
CPU Cooler: Coolit Systems ECO A.L.C. Water Cooler
Monitor: Westinghouse L2410NM 24″ LCD (1920×1200 resolution)
Subjective Performance Testing
Our testing focused specifically on PC gaming using some of our favorite First Person Shooter games, including Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Left 4 Dead 2, and Battlefield Bad Company 2. We set our display resolution at 1920×1200 and turned on all the 5.1/7.1 audio enhancements to hear everything we could using the Gamecom 777 7.1 headphones.
Our objectives during testing were two-fold — to gauge how well these headphones help us locate where specific sounds are coming (directional/positional sound) from and to evaluate the headphones’ overall sound quality during online FPS gaming.
Game summary: Battlefield Bad Company 2 is primarily a squad-based online first person shooter based around modern warfare. Additionally, the game includes a single player campaign whose storyline is a continuation of the original Bad Company. The game’s Destruction 2.0 engine allows for destructible environments,and multiplayer maps contain an array of vehicles, aircraft and turrets and allow for a number of game modes.
One of our favorite, and most anticipated, FPS games to arrive this year was Battlefield Bad Company 2. This is the latest FPS game from the popular Battlefield series that focuses more on team and squad strategy than individual accolades and kills. We played several types of online, multiplayer matches over three weeks of testing to evaluate these headphones.
The first time I put on these headphones and started my first match, I was a bit overwhelmed with the “theater” sound I was hearing. It was like gaming in a old Broadway theater. The high-pitched sounds and depth of the bass seemed to get away from the suburban warfare environment in BFBC2. After optimizing the sound a bit in my board’s sound manager, I was able to tone down the theater surround sound and focus more on the directional sound I needed to bump up my kills in this game. The overall sound quality was also affected by the immersiveness of the theater sound, but after tweaking it a bit in the sound manager I finally got a good medium that gave me good surround sound combined with decent high and low sounds.
Game summary: Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected. The survivors must fight their way through levels, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign’s finale.
The next FPS game we wanted to throw against these headphones was Left 4 Dead 2. I don’t have too much experience playing this particular shooter, but from what I’ve heard it intertwines all of your senses very well into the dark and creepy suburban environment.
The overall depth of the environment in Left 4 Dead 2 really matched up well with the strengths of the 777 headphones. Even the 7.1 directional sound seemed to work better in this game. You really feel immersed into the gaming environment after playing a round of L4D2 with these headphoens. However, the echo and synthetic sound depth really distracted for the game play and the bass really didn’t balance well with the rest of the environmental sounds.
Game summary: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare takes place in a fictional near-future around 2012, where a radical leader has staged an execution order against the president of an The multiplayer portion of the game features various game modes, and contains a leveling system that allows the player to unlock additional weapons, weapon attachments, and camouflage schemes as they advance.
The final game I wanted to concentrate my performance testing on was Call of Duty 4. I’ve played the entire COD series over the years and would say I’m highly proficient in the functionality of the game environment as well as how sound is used in this game to enhance a gamer’s overall experience. After enabling 5.1 sound in the game settings, I was off to try these headphones in Free For All and Team Deathmatch modes.
During my Free For All matches, the bass quality was outstanding and even the treble sounds seemed to pop better than any other game we tested in our benchmarks today. The overall background sounds of bullets flying and airstrikes seemed more deadly than I have heard with other gaming headphones. One of the weaknesses we noticed with these headphones with COD4 was the high-pitched sounds not being exactly crisp during gaming. While the directional sound quality was better than Bad Company 2 and Left 4 Dead 2, it still didn’t provide us great positional sound that would have helped me pinpoint enemy locations and share this intel with my teammates.
During Team Deathmatch game mode, we noticed similar strengths and weaknesses with the Gamecom 777 headset that we noticed during Free For All mode. The bass and booms were outstanding and not overpowering, but the treble sounds seemed to lack true depth that I heard during my Psyko 5.1 headphone testing. The directional and overall sound seemed to have great depth, but still didn’t give me exact information on figuring out where my enemies were located just by sound alone. The “theater” sound really works with this game and we didn’t have to adjust the game sound settings much beyond the stock settings. Overall, the quality of the sound was the best we heard all day from any of the FPS games. We would have liked better positional sound, but with synthetic surround sound some things aren’t going to work as well as true surround sound products.
I have used quite a few
I have used quite a few different gaming headsets but, the best resource I found to get an impartial view on them can be found at http://www.gamingheadsetreport.com, they are constantly adding new headset reviews.