Big heads very welcome
Style over substance?The AX Pro is immediately eye-catching and stylishly designed, decked out in silver and black with the orange TRITTON symbol emblazoned on each of the rectangle-shaped cups. It feels quite heavy to hold, weighing approximately 12oz, but when placed on the head it sits snugly and feels surprisingly light. The circumauraul cups are a rectangular shape with fleecy padding, so they cover the whole of your ear to enclose the sound and give you the full effect of the eight speakers inside. The headset has obviously been built to last. The earpieces are protected well by the high-quality outer shell of the speakers and the headband feels robust and sturdy. The headset can be adjusted simply by sliding the headband or pushing it down on your head. There are seven settings in total so even if you’ve got a head the size of a bowling ball you should be able to get it to comfortably fit.
The unidirectional mic boom manually slots into a hole just underneath the left cup and can be swiveled into position. The mic is very flexible and hard-wearing allowing you to bend it into shape and get it as close or far away from your mouth as you desire. If you want to safeguard the mic from damage, perhaps during transit, you can simply pull the mic out and slot it back in with ease. With so many peripheral manufacturers opting to integrate their mic into the headset, it feels a little strange not being able to tuck it away quickly, but having it as a separate component does mean that you can easily replace it if you ever do encounter a problem. We do prefer an integrated mic, but that’s really a personal preference.
Trailing out of the left cup, just underneath your mic, is a lengthy 12.5m cable that leads to the inline volume control, a small silver device that gives you a lot more functionality than just being able lower and raise the volume. As well as being able to mute sound and mic from the controller you can adjust the front, rear, centre and sub channels of the speakers in your headset independently. In addition to that feature, you can raise and lower the voice chat volume independently of game volume, which comes in handy for team-based games where it’s important to hear the voice of your squad. The fact that the volume control is back-lit has also come in very handy as we tend to game with the lights turned down fairly low.
The inline volume control alone will probably be enough for most gamers, but if you’re really serious about your audio experience the AX Pro comes complete with a decoder, which sits further down the wire. This hub is silver and boxed-shaped measuring approximately 5 x 2 inches. From this device you can raise rear driver levels, tinker with the bass, adjust the time delay for centre and rear channels and switch between Pro Logic and Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound. There are also two headset sockets so you can plug in another AX Pro headset if you’re playing co-op. We’ve tinkered with the decoder extensively and the results that you can get and the ways in which you can change the sound are quite stunning. Unless you’re seriously about your sound though, you’ll probably just leave it on one setting and never touch it again.