There's a built-in USB 2.0 hub, allowing you to hook up your gaming mouse, one-touch media and volume controls, and integrated USB audio. The latter allows the user to plug a gaming headset directly into the keyboard for “strategizing with teammates and trash-talking enemies in clear digital sound”.

I've never quite grasped USB sound… if someone is gonna spend a small fortune on a lovely keyboard, to play games well with, I'd guess they already have a sound card of some sort, and prolly a very good one.

SO .. where does the USB sound come into it? Do you need TWO sound cards? And if so, how do you hear the games stereo, surround sound, or enemy positioning on your £80 Xfi/whatever card if you're plugged into your keyboard's USB sound card.

I'm beffudled. Anyone care to explain?

i dont know how W7 handles multiple sound yet, but condisering vista had a nightmare trying to choose between analogue sound and a digital out (making me choose one as a default) i cant see that being nothing but a nightmare!

Zak33
I've never quite grasped USB sound… if someone is gonna spend a small fortune on a lovely keyboard, to play games well with, I'd guess they already have a sound card of some sort, and prolly a very good one.

SO .. where does the USB sound come into it? Do you need TWO sound cards? And if so, how do you hear the games stereo, surround sound, or enemy positioning on your £80 Xfi/whatever card if you're plugged into your keyboard's USB sound card.

I'm beffudled. Anyone care to explain?

It's got to be a naf USB-based sound-device with internal decoding that just bypasses your expensive sound card and sods quality in favour of practicality.

I might sound a little over the top in saying that, but it always used to annoy me when I played loads of games online and people I knew, having paid £50-100 for a sound card, went and bought a USB headset “because it was easy to use” without any idea that the sound card they'd just purchased was sitting there completely idle.

the simplistics of my earlier WoW days using my Socom USB headset from the PS2 for Ventrilo yet still getting my game audio through the Dolby.

i enjoyed that a lot more than the Fatality full headset i got later down the line

I like my Saitek Cyborg's setup of building in a 3.5mm jack extension for headphones and mic. Very useful!

Despite jumping a whole 99 numbers in model…

Depends how you look at it. You could say it's gone up by 10x; or if you're really geeky, it's gone from “3” to “6”! :P

USB sound is brilliant for VOIP and in-game chatting though - leave the headset plugged in and have the game sound/music via the speakers as normal. Very convenient and far easier than messing around with settings between 5.1 and 2.0, plugging things in/out etc.

At work I have a X-FI GO which means I don't need to open up the case, it's portable and vastly superior to the onboard sound (which is so bad you can hear the processor working).

I use/used dual soundcards on my xp/vista and windows 7 machines. You set the default for your speakers, external amp etc via your main soundcard and then had teamspeak use the motherboard soundcard via a head set. I normally had the headset around my neck so could near the voices from the headset, without killing off the sound from the surround speakers. worked well in many games.

Problem is that if you're not careful everybody hears explosions rather than your voice.

It's a nice keyboard, a bit more understated than the usual Ltech keyboards, although I think at this price I'd take the Roccat Valo.