Setup, Design & Observations
Something that is really impressive about the CM Storm Pulse-R is that it has a modular cable and microphone. This is becoming an increasingly important aspect of items such as headsets because, you spend a lot of money on the headpiece, only for a cable to get damaged and stop the item functioning, or the microphone stops working requiring it to be replaced. With a modular system, simple replace the cable and/or microphone and the headset alone still functions great! Thumbs up for this design implementation and it is something I would like to see more of. The build quality is great and the headset isn't too heavy either. The removable metal plates seem slightly 'gimmicky' as they serve no real purpose other than for aesthetic, same as the LEDs though the end result, is arguably, awesome. Some may not want to waste a precious USB port simply lighting the headset, though there are not many headsets on the market that can take advantage of someones discrete sound card as well as having awesome looking LED lit ear cups. The cable provided is long and braided, adding strength and easier managability. As previously mentioned the in-line remote is fixed 'upside down', though itis good quality and a nice design with the aluminium sliders and white LED lighting.
Comfort wise, I was hoping for something much better, considering the nice soft squishy PU leather padding on the ear cups and on the headband, it would be easy to think that you would be donning a very comfortable headpiece, however this was far from the case. The forementioned small earcups, as suspected, were too small for my strictly average ears and did not fully surround my ears. Reaching somewhere inbetween a circumaural/on-ear design. This could have been fine with the soft padding if it wasn't for the vice-grip like head tightness. This tightness may wear in with time and become more comfortable, but doesn't really make up for the small ear cups. The tight grip and thick padding did make for good noise isolation, as well as head wampth (re warmth). Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this headset if you need to wear glasses.
Multi-Media
When listening through my music playlist, it was instantly noticable how bass heavy the Pulse-R is. The high tones are almost completely lost, the mids muffled and muddied and the lows rumbling. Even in bass heavy music, the balance was lost and could not be completely regained by altering the equaliser. From classical to rock, vocals sounded drowned out, high tones lost, overall a very poor start.
In movies, like with music, dialouge was sometimes drowned out by boomy background noises. I even rage quit watching through The Avengers because the sound was like a burden or a chore.
In gaming, I jumped on an arcade mission on War Thunder, there were distinct rumbles and tonal differences between guns, cannons and engine sounds, though, the muffled 'donk' when a stray round hits your plane was noticably muddied. In DOTA 2, the announcers voice was sometimes over-powered by random rumble as the over accentuated bass spilled into territory outside its welcome arena.
Microphone
To set up the microphone, make sure it is clicked into the port in the correct position defined by grooves around the jack. Once clicked in the microphone had a fairly good quality pick up and was decent enough to not pick up too much background noise. The boom wasn't as flexible as hoped and if you try to twist the boom out of position, you may end up causing random mic issues/ reverb to those on the other end of your conversation. Overall it works well and as long as you make sure you have plugged it in correctly there shouldn't be any cause for concern.
