AMDPower.com

Introduction

Everygreen is well known in the industry for its wide variety of processor upgrade modules. However, recently they have broadened their line of products to include everything from firewire cards to external harddrives, and now Force Feedback Headphones. RumbleFX.com has been developed to cover their audio line of products which, so far, includes these headphones and a 3D amp which we will review later. Here is a list of the features.

Features

The headphones do not actually get the vibration signal from force feedback software in a game. Instead they use DSP cicuitry to read the low frequencies. It takes these low frequencies and converts them to vibration through the use of a transducer. They plug in like any ordinary set of headphones with the exception of the control module containing the batteries and small PCB. The module has volume control and 3 settings for "bass control" which is actually the vibration control. The settings are Off, I, and II. The control piece also has a belt clip attached to it which makes it Walkman friendly and avoids wear on the wires, not allowing the wires to be pulled by the weight of the control module.

I used the headphones with several games to try them out. I fired up Alice and scared the hell out of myself during the intro screen. I unknowingly had set the volume to full blast and between the laughing little kid and my ears tickling, I almost jumped out of my seat. Adjusting the volume a bit, I was off to "get smaller" and battle a deck of playing cards. The vibration was a very cool feeling. It does really "put you into the game". I did notice that with the vibration all the way up, the voices were a bit distorted. With the vibration off, the voices sounded fine. Next, I played a little of Quake III. Now this game sounded and felt really cool! The guns felt awesome. I can definitely see these headphones being used with first person shooters. The padded band and earcushions fit nice. The headphones were quite comfortable. The only thing you have to watch is the control module. If you don't clip it somewhere or put it in your lap, it will keep sliding off your desk until you have worn out the wires.

Overall, I am very happy with the RumbleFX Headphones. I wouldn't recommend using them for your Walkman unless you disable the vibration. But, if you do that, you might as well use a decent pair of headphones instead. However, these things are great for gaming. It adds a new experience to your existing games whether it be PC, Dreamcast, PSX, or whatever. For these reasons I would definitely recommend the product to gamers alike. The unit is currently selling for about $42 at buy.com .