Pictured: style… and substance?
, a well-established manufacturer of PC gaming hardware, has recently released the latest entry of their CM Storm line of gaming peripherals: the
CM Storm Sonuz. Featuring 53mm(!) drivers and a sleek, curvy design, the Sonuz hopes to appeal to gamers in particular who want some extra aural immersion from their games. Bigger isn’t always better, however, and a pretty design doesn’t count for much if a product’s actual quality is sub-par. Does the Sonuz fall prey to the now all-too-common practice of misleading advertising? Or is it actually worthy of its extravagant advertising? We were able to get hands-on review time with the CM Sonuz; read on to find out what we thought of it!
Features
That’s some sexy packaging right there.
The two features most prominently hyped in the Sonuz’s advertising are its 53mm drivers and detachable microphone. For those of you who are not as familiar with the importance of driver size, larger drivers tend to deliver lower frequencies better (i.e. “bass”) while smaller drivers tend to be better at delivering higher frequency sounds (i.e. “treble”). Larger drivers thus do not necessarily provide better sound, but they do tend to excel at reproducing deeper bass notes (think of the drum beats from Kanye West’s “Amazing”, or the guttural “boom” from in-game explosions). 53mm drivers are on the upper end of headset driver sizes, making the Sonuz an impressive proposition for lower frequency sound reproduction. The Sonuz’s detachable microphone can be placed on either the left or right side of the headset, depending on your preference, or even removed completely if you don’t want to have a silly-looking mic hanging out when you’re just listening to music (trust me, I’ve worn my Sennheiser PC 350′s [headset with a non-detachable mic] while listening to my iPod at school, and people looked at me like I was some sort of nerd trying to get a radio signal from extraterrestrial life… pretty humiliating). The detachable mic is, in this reviewer’s opinion, an absolutely brilliant feature to have, especially for gamers who want to use their headset as a regular pair of headphones as well. Specs-wise, the Sonuz boasts a frequency response of 10 – 20,000 Hz, an impedence of 45 ohms, and sensitivity of 98 +/- 3dB @ 1kHz and 1V/Pa. The connector for the Sonuz is a standard 3.5 mm gold-plated headphone jack with an input power draw of 200 mW, which allows the Sonuz to work with almost all standard headphones jacks found on computers, iPods, and the like. Inner cup diameter of the Sonuz’s ear cups come in at 97 mm, so you’ll want to bust out that ruler and measure your ear length to make sure will fit properly over your ears (Just kidding… well, I mean, you totally could measure your ear length if you want to be ABSOLUTELY sure this headset fits you, I guess. Just don’t do it in public, people will think you’re even weirder than a nerd seeking alien radio signals). The Sonuz’s cable is 2.0 m length, which from my experience is a great length of cable to work with. Too short and you’ll be forced to put your head in an uncomfortable position to actually use the headset; too long and you’ll have to wrestle with the cable every time you so much as look at it the wrong way. A nice (but for some reason unlisted) feature of the Sonuz’s cable is that it is a braided cable, which tends to be found on higher-quality gaming peripherals due to its anti-tangle nature (the alternative, regular plastic cable, tends to “stick” to itself). The microphone boasts a frequency response of 100 Hz – 10,000 Hz with a signal to noise ratio of 58dB and a sensitivity of -47 +/- 3dB @ 1kHz and 1V/Pa. An in-line remote gives the user a microphone on/off toggle switch and a volume slider for direct control of the headset.
Comfort
The Sonuz is indeed quite light, as my free-floating hand can attest to.
Cloth padding on the earpads and the head band promise to make extended use of the Sonuz a comfortable proposition. The cloth itself was fairly comfortable, but not nearly as luxurious-feeling as the velvet or leather that some of the higher-end headsets on the market. Also, the cloth padding tended to attract pieces of lint, dust, and other small and fuzzy knicknacks, often resulting in a rather dirty appearance. These not-so-intentional additions to the headset didn’t have any effect on its comfort, but you should probably be prepared to clean the cloth padding fairly often. A 3-hour gaming session of Team Fortress 2 involving heat, sweat, and other unidentifiable body fluids (hopefully just more sweat, but I refuse to comment further on this discrepancy) resulted in a continuously comfortable wearing experience, although there was a bit of moisture buildup in the earpads (since there wasn’t much airflow between my ears and the earpads they were pressed up against). This might be an issue of personal preference, but I find that oval-shaped earpads fit more comfortably than the circle-shaped earpads found on the Sonuz. Thus, I leave it up to the reader to determine whether the Sonuz’s earpad shape is to their liking. Despite its rather large frame, the Sonuz didn’t feel particularly heavy when placed on my head, even during long gaming sessions.
Gaming Performance
We’ve already determined that the Sonuz’s oversized drivers are supposed to reproduce bass notes particularly well, but is this actually the case? In a word… yes! Bass frequencies from explosions in Team Fortress 2 and Battlefield 3 were exceptionally deep and well reproduced by the headset’s drivers. Bass notes were indirectly purported to be the strong suit of the Sonuz, and it does not disappoint in this regard. In-game sound effects that didn’t rely on bass frequencies, such as call outs from teammates and footstep noises, were clearly reproduced; the Sonuz is no slouch when it comes to non-bass frequencies as well. Not all is well with the Sonuz’s sound with regards to gaming, however. The Sonuz features stereo sound rather than the 5.1 (or even 7.1) surround sound found on some other headsets at this price level, which makes the Sonuz decidedly less accurate at giving directional aural feedback to the user. That is, with the Sonuz you will be able to determine whether a particular sound is coming from the left or right side, but you will have less accuracy in determining how far forward/behind you a sound is. A surround sound system, on the other hand, would have allow you to determine more precisely the exact direction that a sound is coming from. For games like FIFA 12 and Starcraft II, having stereo sound as opposed to surround sound doesn’t have much of an effect on gameplay, but FPS’s like Team Fortress 2 and Battlefield 3 greatly benefit from the additional immersion that surround sound brings.
Music Performance
The Sonuz doesn’t actually look this black… But it DOES look this good.
To test the music performance of the Sonuz, I listened to 320kbps mp3 (to all you audiophiles out there, I apologize for not running my music test with FLAC files; I didn’t have any on hand) music files from my computer with the Sonuz, a dingy pair of Skullcandies, my M14X’s laptop speakers, and a $20 2.1 desktop speaker system from Office Depot. The Sonuz, as one one might predict, completely dominated the other three sound-producing devices (especially the Skullcandies; why I haven’t thrown them out yet is a mystery to me). Bass frequencies were a real pleasure to listen to with the Sonuz; the only other audio device that even came close was the 2.1 desktop speaker system, which has a dedicated subwoofer. Mid-level frequencies were decent on the Sonuz, and I was able to hear instruments which I had never heard before in some of my music files, especially things like soft kit drum pats and light triangle tinkles. Highs were also reproduced clearly with the Sonuz, but I noticed that some of the especially high frequencies sounded a bit tinny at high volumes. This slight tinniness, however, was noticed in all three of the other sound devices as well, so in this case we see that the Sonuz’s highs are comparable to those of low to mid-range speaker systems.
Microphone Performance
The microphone on the Sonuz is adequate for video conferencing and trash-talking “n00bs” through in-game voice chat, but don’t expect to record your singing voice with the Sonuz’s microphone. Well, technically you could record yourself singing I suppose, but the recording quality would not be suitable for actual use in recorded music. Since most gaming headsets don’t feature particularly strong microphones anyway, the Sonuz’s microphone is not a major point of contention. The Sonuz’s microphone suffices when used for its intended purpose, which is all one can really expect of a gaming headsets microphone. One interesting problem that I ran into when I first plugged in the mic into my laptop is that the recording volume was extremely quiet. I had to turn up the microphone boost level to +10.0 dB through my computer’s sound settings before I could actually record anything audible from my mic. I am not certain that this is an actual issue with the hardware or if it was just my particular computer’s sound configuration that caused the problem to arise.
Overall
Ignore the hair depression. And the acne scars. And focus instead on the beauty that is the Sonuz.
The Sonuz does in fact live up to its advertising hype; what’s more, it’s an extremely well-designed product in almost every conceivable way. Whether it was comfort, gaming performance, or sound performance, the Sonuz scored high marks in all of the vigorous tests that I put it through. I don’t test hardware to see it get high marks, I test hardware to see it fail (hopefully in some spectacular fashion that I can rant about in my review). The Sonuz, however, passed all of my tests with flying colors, with only one gripe regarding its stereo sound when some other similarly priced headsets feature surround sound. At its MSRP of $69.99, the Sonuz is a great headset that excels at reproducing bass frequencies in particular but also adequately covers all the other important aspects of headsets as well.
Overall Ratings – CM Storm Sonuz Headset (Hardware)
Comfort:
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8/10
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Gaming Performance:
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8/10
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Music Performance:
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9/10
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Value:
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9/10
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OVERALL SCORE:
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88%
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Special thanks to Cooler Master for sending us a CM Storm Sonuz to review!
James Ku has never been particularly skilled at any video game (except Dance Dance Revolution, to which he attributes his preferred username as well as his somewhat respectable legs), a quirk that has nevertheless failed to quell his passion for games of every creed (yes, he loves Assassin's Creed) and race (Need for Speed Underground 2 is his personal favorite). He is currently studying Computer Science at the University of Oklahoma.
