![]() ![]() I made a few calls to test the microphone and was told I sounded unusually clear. On Arcade Fire’s new single, “Creature Comfort,” the bass and drums thumped powerfully with the guitars and vocals remained clean and bright. ![]() After my gaming tests, I connected the Cloud Alpha to my iPhone to test out call quality and music playback. It felt neither too tight nor too loose on my head, the memory foam on the ear cups offered just the right amount of padding, and my ears never got overheated even after long stretches of intense gaming action. Throughout all of my gaming tests, the Cloud Alpha proved to be exceedingly comfortable. The Death Star Battle Station mission sounded awesome, with the whine of the TIE fighters in the first part of the sequence sounding as clean and clear as the low hum of lightsabers in the interior scenes on the Death Star. IGN ReviewNext, I tried the Cloud Alpha with XBox One by firing up Star Wars: Battlefront. Heavy weapons like the D.Va’s fusion cannons had concussive sound, and the high frequency sounds of weapons reloading remained clear. I also played Overwatch and was impressed with the game’s dynamic sound on the Cloud Alpha. Despite this complaint, I will say that Battlefield 1 sounded insanely good and let me crank up the volume to 10 without hearing any evidence of distortion the game’s audio remained crystal clear at max volume. With 7.1 surround sound, objects directly behind me or out in front sounded as if they were directly behind me or in front. The stereo sound let me know what was approaching from the left or right, but I missed the 7.1 surround sound of the Cloud II that expanded the sonic field, giving me a better sense of direction and distance. The lows of large explosions and the rumble of tanks were clear without knocking out the mids and highs of rifles popping and bullets whizzing by. I started with Battlefield 1 on PC, and the game’s audio showed great clarity and balance. GamingI connected the HyperX Cloud Alpha to a PC, an Xbox One, and an iPhone to get a sense of its capabilities. Plug the audio cable into the headset and the other end into pretty much any device with a 3.5mm audio jack, including PCs and Macs, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, phones and tablets, and VR systems. The headset is Discord and TeamSpeak certified. It’s a noise cancelling microphone and sits at the end a flexible arm that makes it easy to position the microphone just so. With the Cloud Alpha, you get stereo sound and only stereo sound. The Cloud II featured a USB sound card that delivered virtual 7.1 surround sound when connected to a PC. The cable features an inline audio control that has a volume dial and mute switch for the microphone. It’s also less like to tear or rip than a rubber-coated cable. It measures 4 feet 8 inches, and the braiding lends a luxurious feel. ![]() The detachable audio cable is braided and long. A small change, to be sure, but still one moving in the wrong direction. One other change from the Cloud II: the Cloud Alpha’s bag is not padded but just a soft, cloth bag. The detachable cable makes it a bit easier to throw the headset in the included bag and hit the road. The Cloud Alpha is a wired headset but its audio cable is detachable (the Cloud II has a fixed cable). I state these figures for those interested in speeds and feeds but I was unable to hear a difference in terms of having added frequencies available to me at the low and high ends, even when conducting side-by-side tests. After testing the headset, I am a believer in the dual chambers, as I will explain in the Performance section below The Cloud Alpha also offers a slightly wider frequency response than the Cloud II at 13Hz-27,000Hz compared with 15Hz-25,000Hz. Separating the two, Kingston claims, allows for greater clarity of sound with less distortion. ALPHA GAMING BATTLE GROUP REVIEWS DRIVERSThe headset features 50mm dual-chamber drivers where one chamber houses the lower, bass frequencies and the other chamber contains the mid and high frequencies. The big news with the Cloud Alpha is inside the ear cups. There’s also a small difference to the outside of the ear cups: the Cloud Alpha features a matte finish to the Cloud II’s glossy finish, a change I give a soft golf clap to for improving the look ever so slightly. No matter, the Cloud Alpha is every bit as comfortable as the Cloud II. There’s no padding on the inside walls of the ear cups, which the Cloud II has for added comfort. Danielle Abraham + 1 moreThe ear cups feature soft, memory-foam padding and a red HyperX logo on the sides. ![]()
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