David Kapadia

Product Type: Headset | Manufacturer: Plantronics | Price: $109.00

Plantronics have been manufacturing headsets for over forty years; having released their first headset in 1962, Plantronics have established a reputation globally as a leading manufacturer of lightweight communications headset products. Plantronics offers a variety of cordless and corded PC headsets aimed at systems for the office as well as those for the home. Therefore, whether it is conference calling that needs to be addressed, Internet telephony, speech recognition software, gaming or even music, Plantronics has an appropriate product solution available for any user.

Features

The DSP (Digital Signal Processing) Digitally-Enhanced USB PC Headset Series released its first headset, the Monaural DSP-100, in 2000, followed by the Lightweight Stereo DSP-300 and Folding Stereo DSP-400. Each of the models in this series essentially includes digital technology, which, according to Plantronics, produces maximum sound clarity, as well as a noise-cancelling microphone.

Therefore, as is to be expected, the latest addition to this series, the DSP-500 Digitally Enhanced USB Multimedia Stereo PC Headset also includes this digital technology, providing the ultimate in sound quality and speech recognition technology.

As is obvious from the name, the DSP-500 is equipped with its own Digital Signal Processing unit along the cord of the headset. This 32-bit DSP improves the audio signal significantly by modifying and enhancing it in order to achieve exceptional stereo sound and finer speech recognition accuracy. The DSP unit contains a 24-bit high signal-to-noise ratio audio codec, which converts digital signal to enhanced analog sound, as well as integrated digital circuitry linking the speakers to the microphone and throughout the headset. These features within the DSP unit enable to headset to both input and output extremely high quality audio with maximum sound clarity. If not yet apparent, the DSP-500 therefore incorporates its own soundcard, thus rendering an installed PC soundcard unnecessary. This is particularly useful with older PCs containing outdated soundcards, as the potential of the latest multimedia can now be re-exploited with the DSP-500.

The DSP-500 comes with a 40mm speaker diameter – the largest in the DSP series. Combined with a 20Hz-20kHz speaker frequency response, the speakers on this headset are capable of reproducing superior sound quality from high-powered music applications to next-generation gaming software. Consequently, whether one wishes to unwind to a Chill-Out album, or immerse them self into a game of, say, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, the speakers on the DSP-500 will make one feel as though they are living the experience. The speakers do provide, as they claim to, an extremely high quality dynamic bass response without any hint of crackling. Similarly, the treble is unfaultable, even at an extremely high volume. (Although perhaps my ears are now, as a result of the high volume, no longer unfaultable!)

The microphone quality is unsurpassed. With 16-bit mono audio quality, as well as a 25dB noise rejection feature acting as a background noise filter, and a frequency response of 100Hz-10kHz, the microphone sound quality is impeccable. Upon testing, the sound quality of the recording was flawless, rendering the microphone ideal for use with both speech recognition technology and conference calling, as is intended by Plantronics. However, perhaps the microphone is slightly too sensitive – when recording a sample, the quality was undeniable, as was the quality of the background radio recording. Although this might not prove to be a problem in an office environment, a home user might find it necessary to eliminate all background noise before making any important communication through the DSP-500. However, whether this can be condemned as a shortcoming is questionable – should the DSP-500 really be criticised for its (over-) excellent quality microphone?