These HyperX Cloud II's sound awful. Any fixes?

[nuo]

Title.

[Revelene]

Originally posted by The Maddog:

My Cloud IIs sound perfect. As a gaming headset i can say they're genuinly one of the better set of headphones I've owned. Much better that some of the proper headphones I've used in the past.

Proper headphones don't come from a pharmacy...

When you actually compare them to anything even halfway decent in the same price bracket, they don't hold a candle. If you even up the budget a little bit, you get into a whole different performance bracket that Kingston only dreams of achieving.

Kingston headsets are measurably bad. Only good on sale and comparable to headphones around $30.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Use a better DAC than the potato crap that comes with it. They're great headphones, just the included DAC is terrible. Use a real stand-alone one from some other company. Or just connect them direct to the computer (or direct to your phone) and listen that way to hear how much better they sound without going through that crappy usb dongle they came with.

[Harry Gumdropzap]

you can buy an interal sound card for like 30-50 dollars from what im seeing on amazon
if you still want to use 7.1 surround sound some have 7.1 surround sound with them

[The Maddog]

Originally posted by Revelene:

Originally posted by The Maddog:

My Cloud IIs sound perfect. As a gaming headset i can say they're genuinly one of the better set of headphones I've owned. Much better that some of the proper headphones I've used in the past.

Proper headphones don't come from a pharmacy...

When you actually compare them to anything even halfway decent in the same price bracket, they don't hold a candle. If you even up the budget a little bit, you get into a whole different performance bracket that Kingston only dreams of achieving.

Kingston headsets are measurably bad. Only good on sale and comparable to headphones around $30.

You're spouting your opinion as fact. They're £75 and completely comparable to any headphone in the same price bracket. That is not my opion, thats an arguable fact repeated by many reviews both from official sources and the average purchaser.

https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/kingston-hyperx-cloud-ii


"Proper headphones dont come from a pharmacy and comparable to $30 headphones?"

If you put down that clown horn you're honking for a moment and clean your ears you might learn something....or not and you can keep posting opinionated and ignorant pap on this forum.

[[☥] - CJ -]

Windows tends to use a standard soundcard driver with no specific features for your setup

Anything related to the soundcard may be resolved by actually installing a proper driver either through the motherboards website or via the soundcards website.

The motherboard site will have a driver specifically designed for the integrated soundcard for that board though. While the soundcards website isnt specifically configured for that specific setup, but should still be better than the basic driver Windows tends to use.
-

Just some FYI for future reference

[nuo]

Could you send a link?

[[☥] - CJ -]

If thats for me, would need to know what soundcard your motherboard uses

[Revelene]

Originally posted by The Maddog:

Originally posted by Revelene:

Proper headphones don't come from a pharmacy...

When you actually compare them to anything even halfway decent in the same price bracket, they don't hold a candle. If you even up the budget a little bit, you get into a whole different performance bracket that Kingston only dreams of achieving.

Kingston headsets are measurably bad. Only good on sale and comparable to headphones around $30.

You're spouting your opinion as fact. They're £75 and completely comparable to any headphone in the same price bracket. That is not my opion, thats an arguable fact repeated by many reviews both from official sources and the average purchaser.

https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/kingston-hyperx-cloud-ii


"Proper headphones dont come from a pharmacy and comparable to $30 headphones?"

If you put down that clown horn you're honking for a moment and clean your ears you might learn something....or not and you can keep posting opinionated and ignorant pap on this forum.

My opinion, but also fact. It is fact that it has terrible treble, sloped mids, and muddy bass. It also has terrible consistency and a THD so bad that it can quite literally be fatiguing. This is all measurable.

That website rates a lot of garbage with top ratings. That is negligible. I can also show you a bunch of reviews that say an Xbox One is better than PC... It is meaningless. What isn't meaningless is measurable data, and all Kingston products have terrible results.

You seem to be triggered by me. That's cool. I'm sorry that I'm not going to learn anything from a review based totally on opinion, and that I stand by measurable data and facts.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by Revelene:

My opinion, but also fact. It is fact that it has terrible treble, sloped mids, and muddy bass. It also has terrible consistency and a THD so bad that it can quite literally be fatiguing. This is all measurable.

I've been personally using and owning my HyperX Cloud II's for about 3 years now and I love them. All of your complaints about bove about trebble, mids, and "muddy bass" are usually either because people tested them with the included USB sound card (it's not really a DAC) that comes with it in the box. Which is complete garbage.

I have mine connected through a Astro Mixamp Pro and they sound amazing. I use them every day for gaming and I love them a lot. I have no issues with mids or bass or treble or anything. Everything just sounds great with no complaints at all.

Also I play with them for hours, sometimes 5-6 hours at a time in a gaming session and they never fatigue my head or anything. They really do have memory foam in the ear cups and it conforms to your head and after about the first 15 minutes and it gets conformed to your head, you literally won't even notice they're there anymore. I don't even realize I have them on after a few hours of gaming myself.

[nuo]

It's a B150 motherboard from gigabyte. It's just the integrated sound.

[[☥] - CJ -]

You can easily go to the Gigabyte site, look up that board and get it from the Support/Download section

[Revelene]

Originally posted by Impending Rentacle Tape:

Originally posted by Revelene:

My opinion, but also fact. It is fact that it has terrible treble, sloped mids, and muddy bass. It also has terrible consistency and a THD so bad that it can quite literally be fatiguing. This is all measurable.

I've been personally using and owning my HyperX Cloud II's for about 3 years now and I love them. All of your complaints about bove about trebble, mids, and "muddy bass" are usually either because people tested them with the included USB sound card (it's not really a DAC) that comes with it in the box. Which is complete garbage.

I have mine connected through a Astro Mixamp Pro and they sound amazing. I use them every day for gaming and I love them a lot. I have no issues with mids or bass or treble or anything. Everything just sounds great with no complaints at all.

Also I play with them for hours, sometimes 5-6 hours at a time in a gaming session and they never fatigue my head or anything. They really do have memory foam in the ear cups and it conforms to your head and after about the first 15 minutes and it gets conformed to your head, you literally won't even notice they're there anymore. I don't even realize I have them on after a few hours of gaming myself.

The measured response that I reference is of the headset, regardless of what DAC it is using. You do know what a frequency response curve is, right? That is what I'm referring to, the actual performance of the drivers.

Bass technically responds okay, down to around 15hz (not bad, but cheaper headphones have better response at lower frequency) but the drivers are thin and wobble (which causes muddiness), mids are okay until about the high mids (which is where they dip, and with any kind of lower frequency at the same time will make this seem even worse), and treble is absolutely terrible with a nose dive dip in the low treble and spikes in the mid-high treble (the dip causing most vocals to sound off and the spikes to causing things to sound sharp and tinny).

When I mentioned fatiguing, I was referring to the THD, which is total harmonic distortion. A measurable data that cannot be disputed (just like the response curve). It doesn't do well with treble, meaning it distorts along with sounding tinny which is rather harsh on your ears. Hearing distortion is never good.

FYI, when you go messing with software EQ, you are not fixing the problem. You add distortion and other audio artifacting.

Now, if one likes them, that is fine. But denying fact that they have terrible cheap Chinese drivers, denying the measurable performance data, and denying that there are cheaper options that outperform them, is simply fanboyism.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by Revelene:

The measured response that I reference is of the headset, regardless of what DAC it is using. You do know what a frequency response curve is, right? That is what I'm referring to, the actual performance of the drivers.

Bass technically responds okay, down to around 15hz (not bad, but cheaper headphones have better response at lower frequency) but the drivers are thin and wobble (which causes muddiness), mids are okay until about the high mids (which is where they dip, and with any kind of lower frequency at the same time will make this seem even worse), and treble is absolutely terrible with a nose dive dip in the low treble and spikes in the mid-high treble (the dip causing most vocals to sound off and the spikes to causing things to sound sharp and tinny).

When I mentioned fatiguing, I was referring to the THD, which is total harmonic distortion. A measurable data that cannot be disputed (just like the response curve). It doesn't do well with treble, meaning it distorts along with sounding tinny which is rather harsh on your ears. Hearing distortion is never good.

FYI, when you go messing with software EQ, you are not fixing the problem. You add distortion and other audio artifacting.

Now, if one likes them, that is fine. But denying fact that they have terrible cheap Chinese drivers, denying the measurable performance data, and denying that there are cheaper options that outperform them, is simply fanboyism.

So the important question: Do you actually own a pair yourself? Have you actually used these yourself? Or are you just quoting "Specs" off of some random website?

[Revelene]

Originally posted by Impending Rentacle Tape:

Originally posted by Revelene:

The measured response that I reference is of the headset, regardless of what DAC it is using. You do know what a frequency response curve is, right? That is what I'm referring to, the actual performance of the drivers.

Bass technically responds okay, down to around 15hz (not bad, but cheaper headphones have better response at lower frequency) but the drivers are thin and wobble (which causes muddiness), mids are okay until about the high mids (which is where they dip, and with any kind of lower frequency at the same time will make this seem even worse), and treble is absolutely terrible with a nose dive dip in the low treble and spikes in the mid-high treble (the dip causing most vocals to sound off and the spikes to causing things to sound sharp and tinny).

When I mentioned fatiguing, I was referring to the THD, which is total harmonic distortion. A measurable data that cannot be disputed (just like the response curve). It doesn't do well with treble, meaning it distorts along with sounding tinny which is rather harsh on your ears. Hearing distortion is never good.

FYI, when you go messing with software EQ, you are not fixing the problem. You add distortion and other audio artifacting.

Now, if one likes them, that is fine. But denying fact that they have terrible cheap Chinese drivers, denying the measurable performance data, and denying that there are cheaper options that outperform them, is simply fanboyism.

So the important question: Do you actually own a pair yourself? Have you actually used these yourself? Or are you just quoting "Specs" off of some random website?

I've used them, yes. Done a tear down even.

However, that doesn't change the measurable data or "specs". Putting them in quotes makes them not matter, right?

Sound playback is engineered. It has specifications. There are specifications better than others. The audio it produces is also measurable. That is fact, regardless of your personal opinion.

[Harry Gumdropzap]

just because a headphones specs are worse than others doesnt make the headphones bad
there are just better options available