Razer Barracuda HP-1 5.1 Headphones

Speaking of strict stereo sound quality, the barracuda sucked, big time. The mids were too uneven for such an expensive headphone, and everything sounded too protruding, on both soundcards. Music listening is not happening. So we unceremoniously switched straight to gaming, and I played Prince of Persia. This was in complete surround, and sounded way better, though not spectacular. I still feel the mid frequencies are a little jarring, but this time the bass and ambience kicks in, and adds whopping volume power to the sound response.

The knobs on the control pod are very nice and responsive, no complaints there. Plus another good thing was that the circuit had very little, not really audible noise levels. Considering it's an active circuit, cheap components and bad design means irritating noise - like you find on so many ‘reputed’ noise cancellation models - but this came clean.

Conclusion
The price is about Rs. 9,000; quite a hefty sum to pay. It definitely has a very powerful� and ‘forward’ type sound, which is albeit great for gaming audio. I have to mention this; my colleague Nikhil who does the gaming reviews here on Tech2, owns this piece, and after about 10 months it has conked off. Of course it might be a one off issue, but nevertheless... The surround sound works great, so overall the unit will get a better than average, respectable rating of 3.5.