Thread: Astro A40 Audio System Review

Let’s not beat about the bush here, these are expensive, very expensive. At £200 you could buy a new 360 Elite and several games. But god damn are they good.

At this kind of price, you have to either be a Pro gamer who need the best kit or a mature gamer with plenty of disposable income. Both groups want the same thing though, excellent performance and good helping of style and I’m happy to inform you all that the A40’s deliver on both counts.

First and foremost is the sound quality. It’s difficult to describe sound quality but here we go anyway. You know the first time you watched something in beautiful HD (for me it was Transformers Blu-Ray in HMV) and then you may go and watch that same thing later on a SD DVD or broadcast television, it was like watching it through a bowl of soup, and after using the A40’s you realise that you’ve previously had chicken soup in your ears. I guess what I’m getting at here is that you notice a bit of a quality improvement when you first use them but it’s only when you go back to your normal set up that you really notice how amazing they are.

I’ve been using them to play Modern Warfare 2 online so far and boy do they do their job. I suck at COD Multiplayer but these headphones make me suck a bit less... Awesome! While hiding in a bush or something I can hear other players footsteps as they attempt to sneak up on me, not only that but I can also tell the exact direction they are approaching from, left-right, forwards-back and up-down with absolute clarity. The crispness of the footsteps, the click when somebody reloads 50m away from you the chink of a flash-bang hitting the ground, everything is perfect. The only problem you then face is campers hiding in grass laying down, but no kind of audio set up is going to help you against those crotch-bites. One example from last night, I was hiding up in a shed or something trying to scope out the big house for snipers when I heard footsteps to my right, looked out the window and saw some bastard sneaking through the long grass 50m away, located him straight away and quickly dispatched him. That’s how good these are, they make mediocre players chart in the top 3!

The headphones themselves are of incredible quality (staying like that even at very high volume) and comfort, listening to movies or my iPod through these I can hear stuff I never knew was there before. It’s quite a step up for me too as I have never had surround sound in my life. The cans themselves are well padded and fit round my ears comfortably. The head strap is adjustable for any size of freakishly huge/small head and well padded also.

Now the microphone is of incredible quality, completely directional and able to pick up even my hushed whispers at gone midnight and deliver them to my team-mates with perfect quality. I also sometimes have trouble picking up what other people are saying and it’s here that the Mix-Amps little dial comes in, you can change the balance of game/chat volume so you can clearly hear only what you want to hear (so while playing MW2 you turn the dial all the way to “Game” so you can’t hear all the people hurling insults at you for sucking/being gay/talking about how hard like is as a gay man in Texas/such and such a girl turned some spotty teen down/whatever else you don’t really want to hear about.

And even an endorsement from my girlfriend, she says “it’s like being at the cinema”, and remarkably didn’t kill me for spending so much money.

Cables, cables everywhere, there are a lot of cables that come with this, in the Mix-Amp box alone there are at least 6 cables which you will never use. Setting up the Astros requires 4 cables minimum: Optical cable from Xbox to Mix-Amp, USB power cable from wherever to Mix-Amp, cable connecting headphones to Mix-Amp and finally cable connecting Mix-Amp to controller. That’s a lot of wires and (unless you’re very careful) one hell of a mess.

One final thought, if you’re going to but these make sure you get the Astro A40 headset and the Mix-Amp, I cannot stress that enough!

I’m not going to say that everybody should rush out and but these, but if you’re in the market for a new headset or some high quality headphones I would gladly recommend the Astro A40 Audio System to everybody who can afford them, like they say “You get what you pay for...”

they sound so good i think ill buy 2 pairs lol

they sound nuts, but £200, pfffff. Bit dear for a pair of headphones.

That's what I thought but I'm using them all the time so not that bad, every time my xbox goes on, so do these!

are these that good that you now get told to F OFF by a teenager in crystal clear stereo sound lol

Not stereo Bolty, I get told to f off on 5.1 surround sound! And after all, isn’t that what xbox live is all about?

your spot on m8 pity it dosent come with an eletricute down the earpeice button like on james bond lol

Love em their the dogs aren't they i couldn't play without a quality headset. I think my Turtle beach ones are due a swim

Yeah they are, I’ll take a pic of me wearing ‘em later if I remember, and one of the mess of wires they create, well worth it though!

It’s like an extra sence while playing, amazing and they help no end!

OOOh a pic dont Repeat no nudity is required.. this is a family community remember