Arctic Sound P531 5.1 Channel Gaming USB Headset Review

Usage
To use the headset to the fullest potential you need to install the included software. It’s a pretty straight forward installation, but you will need to restart your computer after it’s installed.

The driver software is like any standard soundcard utility. You have five tabs in the program which include the Main Setting, Mixer, Effect, Karaoke/Magic Voice, and Information. The Main Setting tab allows you to change the system input (2, 4, 6 or 8 channels), DSP mode and Output mode. The Mixer tab allows you to control the volume of the output, speakers, line in, and microphone as well as adjusting any recording volumes.

Arctic Sound P531 5.1 Channel Gaming USB Headset Arctic Sound P531 5.1 Channel Gaming USB Headset

The effect tab allows you to make any alterations to the sound, such as the environment, environment size and your standard equalizer with preset settings.  The Karaoke tab allows you to make effect changes to your microphone, whether it’s a microphone echo or “magic voice”. It also allows you to change the key shifting and voice cancellation of the microphone.

Arctic Sound P531 5.1 Channel Gaming USB Headset Arctic Sound P531 5.1 Channel Gaming USB Headset

The last tab includes all of the information regarding the driver such as the audio engine, codec, driver version, controller and DirectX version.

Arctic Sound P531 5.1 Channel Gaming USB Headset

After playing around with the settings I decided to play some music. I didn’t find it necessary to use any of the audio effects and just let the music play by default. The music sounded pretty good, but this didn’t really test the surround on the headset.

While playing a couple gaming rounds I was able to notice the surround sound effects in the headset, the worked rather nicely; you can clearly tell where the sounds were coming from. Once I found that surround sound to work I decided to test the in-line speaker volume. You could clearly notice a difference in sound with the main and front speaker volume; however I wasn’t able to notice a very different volume change when altering the rear, sub and center speaker channels.

After about an hour I also found the headset to be uncomfortable. I also have glasses, which were most of the problem. After about an hour the earphones start to irritate the ears when pressing on the glasses. People without glasses shouldn’t have any problems using this headset for extended periods of time.