Gadgetory

Linus tech tips coverage of CES 2014 is brought to you by NCI XCOM your source for great technology selection and service along with Corsair memory and Western Digital we're here at the audio technica booth having a bit of a holy balls moment because they have finally figured out that gamers around the world are using their audiophile grade headphones for gaming and they are kind of I was being walked through the logical process here and they're like well I guess it makes sense because if you want to hear a bunch of details and clarity in the music you probably need that in games as well and that is absolutely correct that is exactly why people are using audiophile grade headphones for gaming now with that said it's not always the most convenient way to do it so they're like okay alright fine we're going to take this we're going to embrace it we're going to run with it we're going to make actual gaming headsets so this is the ath adg-1 and the ath ag-1 they're both quite similar so they both feature their double air dampening system which reduces the effect of external vibration on the sound that you're hearing they both use their advanced engineering and manufacturing processes that are borrowed from the audiophile grade headphones and then they're basically just going okay well we can make that stuff so let's let's put that in here let's put you know fifty three millimeter drivers let's make sure the impedance is appropriate at about thirty eight ohms so you can run this off of your onboard sound and then let's go ahead and take microphones which we also happen to be quite good at and let's tack them on so let's start with actually we'll start with the closed back design so the ADH art the ATH AG one has a sort of matte black and gold aesthetic that should be quite appealing to gamers but not off-putting for people who are a little bit more more serious they've also got their 3d wing support system so that is rather than having a full headband I'm going to go ahead and model these for you guys there we go oh the mics on listen mode so anyway so rather than having a full headband it is meant to be no adjustments required it just sits on your head and it should kind of float there it's not my personal preference but lots of people do like them which leads us to the microphone the microphone is on a 100 degree swivel so you can see it goes a little up and down like that and then this I love these flexible sort of repositionable things because the problem with any gaming headsets is that they have these large boom mics that end up sitting right in front of your mouth but actually the correct positioning for mouth is more like or for a mouth for a microphone is more like at the corner of your mouth so this is awesome and it sounds absolutely fantastic they've got a demo here where you can talk to each other so edsel and i we're both plugged in and standing there listening to each other through the headphones and it is uh it is one of the best actually it for me it's the best microphone i've heard on a gaming headset and i guess it bloody well better be if it's going to cost two hundred and fifty dollars or three hundred dollars but then again with that said I've heard gaming headphones that cost that much and don't have fantastic microphones so you can take nothing for granted these days let's move on to the ath ATG one so this is the slightly more expensive one it uses an open back design just as a reminder the difference between a closed back design and an open back design is basically how much people can hear of what you're listening to and how much you can hear of what the people around you are saying or doing so you've got an aluminum mesh that's the that's the openness rather than that plastic cover and other than that it's quite similar instead of the pleather ear cups we've got cloth ear cups on this model the same microphone technology and there's actually something that I missed very briefly there before and there is a mute button on the inside of the mic right about there now they both are able to plug into your PC natively using a three-and-a-half millimeter jet but they also include a nice little handy dandy USB DAC the one odd thing about this product is that they're using a 4-pole connector on the three-and-a-half millimeter jack I understand why they're doing it they want to be able to natively plug into a tablet or a smart phone for mobile gaming in fact many ultrabooks are using them these days but I think some people are going to be a little bit confused when they go to plug this directly into their sound card or their objective 2 headphone amplifier or other higher-end audio solution on their PC and kind of go oh well why did they do this don't worry though guys there are splitter cable cables where you can take one for pull and go up two to three poles so there they're available fairly inexpensively thank you guys very much for checking out our coverage of the ath adg-1 and the ath ag1 Audio Technica gaming headsets I'm extremely excited about these I wish I could comment more on this quality but they just have a single demo here running and I'm in the middle of a crowded show floor so hopefully we'll be able to bring you guys a review of this sometime in the in this year guys don't miss any of our CES 2014 coverage remember our trip to the show is powered by NCI XCOM your source for great technology selection and service as well as courser memory and Western Digital without those guys we would not be able to be here bringing you guys these videos