Sony V600 Review

Thresh's comments in BLACK
Kenn's comments in BLUE

If there's something everyone has around the house, it's a pair of earphones. From the ratty tin-cup-on-a-string Radio Shack variety to the new pimpin' digital remotes that come with portable CD players, you've got a pair somewhere. I'm also willing to bet that at one point or another, everyone's hooked up their earphones to their PC to listen to music or play games with. There are numerous reasons why you might prefer headphones to speakers: Privacy (if you're watching to dirty .avis and don't want your mom to hear strange grunting noises coming from your room) , stereo separation, space considerations, and so forth. Depending on the quality of your equipment, you either loved it or hated it. Considering I used the cheap-ass headphones that came free with my now-antiquated Walkman, I definitely fell into the latter group. When I won a pair of quality Roland speakers in a Doom 2 tournament back in '95, I thought they were the only way to go, and kept that belief for quite a while. Then one day, after having accidentally dropped and destroyed my speakers coming home late one night from a LAN party, I started shopping around for a good pair of headphones. I wanted a pair to use for Quake, MP3s, and CD Audio that could conceivably replace the standard computer speakers. It was at this time that I happened across the Sony Studio Monitor MDR-V600's.

I've been to a number of LAN parties, tournaments, and other such events in which speakers were too loud, not loud enough, or simply impractical, so I've come to realize just how important a decent pair of headphones are to gaming. I've grown so used to them nowadays that I actually find playing with a speaker setup is much harder, even compared to the impressive-sounding Cambridge MicroWorks system I have setup in my office. Without headphones, I've found it's a lot harder to make out soft sounds or place the position of specifics shots. What I want from a pair of headphones is one that conveys sounds accurately, are comfortable for extended use, muffles external noise (closed-ear design), and can be packed away and carried around fairly easily, and the Sony MDR-V600s seem to be jazzed up to do the job.