The personal audio market is fierce, and there is serious competition between vendors about who gets to nestle in your warm auditory canal. There are small in-ear sets that are portable and light, but are also light on features. There are also large around-the-ear behemoths that deliver impressive bass, but are too bulky to pair with your iPod. Then there are the complete headsets for the PC gamer which adds a microphone, but who wants to lug a mic with them when all you want to do it listen to music? Can’t there be “one headset to rule them all”?
SteelSeries believes they have the answer with their Siberia In-Ear headset. It was designed for multi-functionality. Everything from seperate microphone to cord length on this product was designed so it can be used both for playing games and still use it with MP3 players and other handheld devices.
The Siberia in-ear headset was requested by professional PC gamers that wanted an audio product that would be easier to transport than normal headsets, but also offered great noise cancellation and high-fidelity audio. The result is the SteelSeries Siberia in-ear headset, which were the first in-ear headsets available on the market (around 2001).
SteelSeries Siberia In-Ear Headset Specifications
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- The SteelSeries Siberia in-ear headset effectively blocks background noise, allowing for listening and IP-telephony in noisy locations.
- The headset is specifically designed for a multitude of uses including MP3-players, laptops, the Sony PSP and other consoles (sound isolation allows for low volume settings) as well as IP-telephony. The headset consists of in-ear earphones and a seperate unidirectional microphone that can be attached to both cord and clothing.
- The length of the cord on the in-ear headphones is optimized for use with MP3-players and similar products. An extra long cord is included for use with comptuers.
- 3 sets of plastic sleeves (6 sleeves in total) are included in with the headset.
- Available in both white and black editions.
The Siberia In-ear headset comes with alot in its little packaging. Included in the package are the earbuds themselves (with 3-foot cord), the clip-on microphone (with 3-foot cord), three sets of silicone ear grips (SteelSeries calls them sleeves), a dual 6-foot extension cord, and a grey cloth carrying bag.
The earbuds come pre-installed with a set of “kung-fu grip” 3-finned silicon ear sleeves, and two other “jellyfish” grips are included in the package. If you are exercising or jogging with your headphones, then you’ll appreciate the extra grippiness of the 3-finned buds, as they are much harder to pull out. They are a little uncomfortable for my taste, and I prefer the “jellyfish” grips, which snugly fit the opening of my ear canal.
The cords for both the headphones and microphone are of decent girth, and the braided wires inside bend easily without kinking. There is a decent amount of “sleeving” at all joints, which will definately help prevent breaking the wires inside. The right earbud is daily-chained to the left earbud, which is then tethered to an audio jack. This earbud design helps prevent the cord from getting tangled or otherwise in the way, and minimizes “premature evacuation”. The 1/8-inch jacks are gold-plated, which has become a trademark of quality audio gear.
The microphone is a completely seperate unit, complete with its own seperate wire, but includes two in-line connectors that allow you to snugly attach the headphone lead, keeping the wonder-twins together. The microphone also has an aligator clip, suitable for attaching to your t-shirt collar, necklace, or hairy nipples. The microphone can swivel around on this clip, so it can be pointed towards virtually any direction. The microphone unit also has a nice on/off switch, but there is no visual indicator other than the switch position.
The headphones reduce noise passively, meaning that there are no fancy electronics to “cancel out” noise as active sets do. The silicone ear grips do help reduce noise almost as well as a passive “around the ear” headset does, as it forms a complete seal between your ear canal and the outside world. With no music playing, outside sound was reduced and muffled, but still noticable. Once music is playing, however, the outside world is barely noticable (assuming your music has relatively consistent volume).
To test the sound quality of the headphones, we sampled several different music types and played several PC games. When testing music reproduction, we tried selections from The Canadian Brass’ “High, Bright, Light, and Clear”, which is one of the best digital classical recordings, in my opinion. We also tested some techno ambient music to test the bass reproduction of these earbuds, and of course we couldn’t resist throwing in “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns n Roses to test the entire fidelity spectrum.
We tried EQ settings on several of these tracks to hear how much the audio signals can be pushed through these little earbuds. They sound great even without any equalization, but some rock and dance music seemed a little flat. The headphones responded favorably to maximum treble, which made the track much brighter, and the earphones sounded fine without any distortion.
Things were a little different when we played with bass settings. Headphones with drivers this tiny weren’t expected to produce much bass at all, and the Siberia does produce much better bass than OEM earbuds, but lack the “umph” that a professional set can deliver. A little bass enhancement improves the sound for dance and rock tracks, but you have to watch the threshold, as it was very easy to create distortion. We could push the bass to “9” on most players without much distortion, but at 10 the bass of most tracks started to crumble.
We also played this set with BioShock, Call of Duty 4, Quake Wars, and other games that have loud gunfire. The sound was very good, but explosions and gunfire lacked the extra push that lets you “feel” them. Overall the sound produced by this headset is very crisp, but bass is only slightly better than average.
The microphone’s audio quality is pretty good, and is more than suitable for PC gaming or IP telephony. One could even record a decent-sounding podcast with this mic. How well others can hear you is dependant on how well you position the microphone, and most people should clip it to their t-shirt pointing up towards their mouths. Because the mic isn’t directly in the path of your outgoing airway, you’ll reduce audio blowouts when making “puh” or “buh” sounds
The SteelSeries Siberia In-Ear headset is surprisingly good for its price. For around $40, you get a great set of in-ear headphone buds plus a quality clip-on microphone. The silicone ear buds do a good job of passive noise reduction, and feature different grips, depending on your comfort preferences.
The audio quality of the earbuds is pretty good for this price range. The sound produced from a variety of different music sources had crisp highs and good midrange, but lacks deep bass. Gamers that are used to the sound from a full-sized headset may miss the big boom from explosions and gunfire, but the portability of this headset is one of its strongest assets.
The Siberia headset is suitable for PC gaming and IP telephony, and its modular design allows users to completely shed the microphone when taking this headset on the road with their MP3 players. Even if you never need a microphone, these earbuds alone have great quality for the price, and the “free” mic only adds to their value.
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1 Comment
they play very nice sound :)