Page 3 - Subjective Audio Analysis
Reviewing audio devices require extensively trained ears, lots of experience, and sufficient technical knowledge. Even for the experienced auditioner, it may prove challenging at times to obtain an accurate evaluation of a product without a thoroughly familiar product to use as a simultaneous reference. Furthermore, many self-proclaimed audiophiles are susceptible to biased write-ups due to placebo effects from false advertising. While I am not going to even try to claim that I am the only trustworthy or best evaluator for sound, it is fact that most computer review sites have editors who are insufficiently trained in reviewing audio equipment. Give them practically anything and all you will read about goes along the line of "good bass, nice midrange, awesome treble, really clear sound, 10/10". While there are many knowledgeable audio reviewers at various respected online media outlets, they are by far the minority.
After taking some time to get used to the fit of the ROCCAT Syn Max Air, I put the headset to the test. All test tracks are high-quality CD-equivalent files. Equalizer settings were set to flat for testing purposes. For gaming, I played VALORANT and osu! First-person shooter games are probably the most important games to test these headphones with, as the gameplay can heavily rely on hearing to gain information. I find that playing rhythm games like osu! can also be very important to test latency, but in other cases, the latency is less relevant.
I started testing the ROCCAT Syn Max Air’s lower frequencies. In this section, I found the headset produced a nice deep and round sound. The headset was not too boomy, which is a trait I find with a lot of lower quality headphones or earbuds I have experienced. The bass was heavy enough to produce a solid sound while maintaining a smooth output. In comparison to the Syn Pro Air, I would say this headphone's output was much smoother, as the audio produced felt quite natural. In games like first-person shooters, bass sounds correlate to things like footsteps. Footsteps were very easy to listen for with the Syn Max Air. If you use these for music, the bass will feel overshadowed when you compare it to the upper midrange, but it could be useful for gaming audio.
Moving on to the midrange, this is where this headset started to differ in comparison to its predecessor. Just like the Syn Pro Air, the sound was quite natural and clear, but I found it to be much more consistent across the board. The sound signature of the headset was much flatter with no overpowering upper midrange boost. Although midrange is not that important for strict gaming, it is still useful for hearing what your teammates are saying or your abilities. This boost will aid in hearing these voices and abilities, making it easier to react to them.
Continuing with the treble, as the upper midrange was not overly boosted, I found that the sound produced in this area was not overpowered. I will say this section was the least clean, having a dry sound. While not being the cleanest, it still sounded adequate for a gaming headset. The upper end was also rounded off, making the higher pitches sound a bit more recessed. In games, the treble is often heard in glass breaking or guns reloading. Glass breaking or reloads were still audible with the recessed nature of the treble, but it was sometimes missed. Overall, the sound signature of the ROCCAT Syn Max Air was quite strange with its upper-midrange boost. The sound signature of this headset looked like a single hump on a camel’s back or a lowercase n.
The soundstaging was adequate for most gaming scenarios. I found it to be good enough as I could easily understand my opponent’s general location when sound was produced. When it came to music, it was much harder to distinguish the instruments as the depth and width covered a relatively small range, making the instruments sound close together. In other words, soundstaging for music was not great, but this is a gaming headset, and it did what it was designed to do. Furthermore, there are always limitations to the closed-backed design that we must consider.
When it came to layering, I found the ROCCAT Syn Max Air was fine for gaming in regards to detail and precision. In music, the details felt a little more jumbled with all the different instruments and voices. The frequency separation was not very distinct, especially in the upper-midrange and the treble. From the lack of separation, came a lack of cohesion and cleanness.
Because the ROCCAT Syn Max Air uses a closed-back design, there was not much sound leakage in comparison to an open-back headset. The choice of PU leather instead of fabric enforced this more as even less sound was able to escape. With this combination, the sound was isolated to the user extremely well. I personally do not have much preference in the matter of sound isolation, but I understand this is important for some gamers.
As for the microphone quality, I used Audacity to record and export the audio as an MP3 file. From this, you can hear the microphone is able to pick up my voice quite easily. After listening to the audio recording, I was quite satisfied with how the microphone actually sounded. I did find that my voice was a little muffled. There was a lot less noticeable fuzziness in my voice, which is an improvement from its predecessor. For voice communication, I would say this microphone would suffice. If you were looking towards a streaming path, I would recommend you buy a dedicated microphone, or at least a headset with a higher quality microphone like the Turtle Beach Elite Atlas Pro.
As the ROCCAT Syn Max Air is a wireless headset, it is important to consider the battery life and wireless connectivity. ROCCAT claims the Syn Max Air can last up to 16 hours on a single charge, I assume with the RGB LEDs off. In my personal use, I found it to last 13 hours with the RGB LEDs on and about 20 hours with the lights off. Despite not having a 24-hour battery life, this is still impressive as you will often leave this headset on its charging dock. You will likely never run into issues with it running out of battery assuming you are using the charging dock as a storage device.
The part I found interesting was the wireless connection as the range is quite large. I was able to walk across most my house without having any connection issues. This is an absolutely acceptable range as it is unlikely you will be more than 40 feet away from whatever device you are using with this headset. The ROCCAT Syn Max Air charges quite quickly. Despite being able to track the battery life of the headset, I could not precisely measure the rate of charge as the battery percentage listed was not very accurate. Other than that, I observed basically no wireless delay. Even when playing rhythm games like osu!, I felt as though I was wearing a normal wired headset, which was excellent.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Hardware and Software
3. Subjective Audio Analysis
4. Conclusion
