Tritton AX Pro 5.1 Surround Sound Gaming Headset Review

I used to own the Tritton AX360 headset a year ago and it worked well but I just didn’t need a gaming headset then, so I sold them off. After we moved though, the wife doesn’t want to listen to me playing video games so she told me to get a headset, so with the wife’s approval, I weighed my options.

There are basically three options for gaming headsets for your Xbox 360: Turtle Beach, Tritton or Astro. I’ll quickly run down how I picked Tritton. The Turtle Beach hardware is wireless, which is a plus, but real sound companies haven’t been able to perfect wireless 5.1 surround sound and I don’t expect Turtle Beach to be the company to crack it. Sure, enough there are plenty of complaints to read about the sound quality of the wireless 5.1 surround sound X4’s. So pass on those.

I took a look at the Astros, the pro’s use them so I figured they should be pretty good and they’re wired like the Trittons. I couldn’t find any information on cable lengths and got the impression that they’re really designed for gaming in a LAN configuration. Which is to say, sitting right in front of the screen so the mix amp receiver is right there on the table in front of the screen. I’ll be gaming in a living room situation with the screen about 8-feet away and I want the receiver to stay by the Xbox.

The Tritton AX360 and AXPro come with a single 12’ cable to run between the receiver and your sitting location, the AXPro has the in-line surround volume controls and $100 lower price. Those things sealed the deal for me.

Design

The AXPro relative to the AX360 is worth the small amount extra. The build quality is nice and solid. The headband has a nice extra bit of cushion and the ear cups have a bigger hole inside for your ears to completely fit. The ear cups are material instead of that rubber feel of the older AX360. The kit also comes with extra headband and ear cup cushions. The ear cups also light up since the headset is now powered, the TT logo glows orange which is a nice touch especially gaming at night when the lights are dim. Also new on the AXPro model, the in-line control box which gives you total volume control.

Receiver

The Receiver is pretty much the same as the AX360 model, it has all the same jacks, buttons and plugs. In order to get 5.1 surround sound into the receiver, you need to use the fiber cable as there is no HDMI port. If you are using HDMI to connect your Xbox 360 up to your TV, you will now need to use the fiber audio dongle to connect the AXPro receiver to your Xbox 360. Audio still does pass through HDMI to your TV, so you’ll need to mute the sound on your TV or surround sound system. At the time of this writing, the Xbox 360 doesn’t have a way to select audio output to only fiber or to HDMI. The receiver has a small power supply that plugs into it on the end and has an associated on/off button so you can shut the receiver off when not in use.

Headset

The headset itself more solid than the AX360 model. The ear cups are much more comfortable, although after multiple hours, my ears did hurt a tiny bit like they were being pressed against my head for a long period of time. The ear cup caps on the outside of the headset do snap off but doing so just exposes the light source which is two LEDs on each side that illuminate the TT logo on both sides. I suppose, at some point, there may be custom caps to put on there, I wouldn’t mind a Gears of War logo being lit up in red actually

The ear cups won't rotate to sit flat against your chest if you wear them around your neck. Some higher end headsets can do that but the Trittons don’t have this feature. The microphone is very rigid and plugs into the bottom of the left ear cup with a regular 3.5mm jack. It plugs in firmly but it is not very adjustable, the boom can swing closer or farther away from your mouth but won't move up and down.

Like the AX360, the AXPro connects the headset to the receiver box with a 12-foot cable which is plenty long enough to reach across the average living room setup. The long cables allow you to mount the receiver by the Xbox 360 managing the cables nicely allowing only one cable to run to your sitting location. Unlike the AX360, the AXPro headset is powered so there is a second power adapter that plugs into the cable that runs between the receiver and the headset. This powers the in-line controller and the fancy lights on the headset but it stays back where you mount the receiver, you don’t need to worry about finding a power plug near your sitting location nor manage yet another wire.

In-Line Controller

The in-line controller is new to the AXPro system and it’s amazing. On the face, there are four buttons which control the sound to the front speakers, center speaker, rear speakers and the subwoofer. There’s five settings: min, low, medium, high and max and, as a nice feature, these buttons are lit up and every setting is associated with a different color. So if you customize the volume to the individual sound fields, you will see the different colors on the controller. If they’re all of equal volume, they’ll all be the same color. The left side is the master volume which adjusts volume 1-Db at a time and the right side has independent voice volume controls.

The AX360 system had issues with mixing the sound from the game environment with the voices of your teammates, you'd find yourself trying to hear people talk when the game noise got loud. On the AXPro system, the voice volume is very adjustable so there is absolutely no problem hearing your teammates.

There is a mute function which will mute the microphone if you need to carry on a private conversation outside of the game, very handy and a standard feature on the stock Xbox 360 microphone. There is a cable that runs from the in-line controller to the mic jack in the bottom of your Xbox 360 controller which is coiled so it can stretch with your movement avoiding accidental unplugging.

Overall, the design changes associated adjustments to voice chat mixing makes the AXPro superior to the AX360. But, the AXPro is not without some faults; in what only can be called a total design clusterfuck, the headset has no off button. You would think with all the buttons on the in-line controller, it wouldn’t be that difficult to add a power on/off button like the receiver box. But no... there is no way to power off the headset! In testing, we left them for an hour thinking that maybe they go to sleep on their own but later we found the power was still on and the ear caps glowing. Seriously, WTF? Tritton really expects us to dig around in our cabinet to find the jack where the power supply plugs in by the receiver and unplug it to shut the headset off?

Sound

Tritton headsets have one advantage the others do not: they don’t emulate surround sound. Other products use virtual Dolby Digital to simulate surround sound out of two speakers where the Trittons have four speakers in each ear. The four speakers produce their own independent sound field which, in my opinion, is the best way to go.

Would you rather have for your audio system for your home theater: one speaker bar on top of your TV to emulate surround sound or six individual speakers placed where they should be to produce proper sound fields? I think Tritton is doing it right.

The AXPro system sounds awesome! I’m not really sure if they sound better than the AX360 system but the sound fields are way more customizable thanks to the in-line controller and the independent volume control for voice chat is an absolute win.

At the moment, I’m still tuning the 3D sound delay and the sound field volumes but I’m happy with the delay being +10 to enhance the 3D sound like it would be using a real sound system and I have center and back sound fields one color higher than front and sub. This seems to produce really good results but sound quality is different for every listener so you’ll want to tinker with the settings on your own to find what’s perfect for you.

I can hear way more sound definition in-game with the Trittons than using a proper 7.1 audio system. Mostly because the speakers are hanging off your ears where as a full 7.1 audio system the speakers are disbursed throughout the room and would need excessive volume levels to really bring out all those sound details you can hear wearing the Trittons. So far playing Gears of War 2, I’ve only run into one map which has produces audio crackle and that’s Tyro Station when the train comes rolling through. Other than that, the audio has been solid and impressive.

If you’re looking for a surround sound headset to save your marriage or just to get a bit of a competitive edge, the Tritton AXPro should be on your short list. The performance and features offered in this kit for the $150 price point is really hard to beat.