X-bit labs

ZALMAN Theatre 6 (ZM-RS6F) Review: First 5.1 Headphones from the Cooler Maker

Category: Multimedia

by Sergey Samarin

[ 06/09/2004 | 03:54 PM ]

Today we are going to take a closer look at a new product from ZALMAN: a nice headphone set, which will undoubtedly enjoy a warm welcome in the gaming community. Find out more about this solution in our detailed review!

Table of contents:

• Specification
  
• Closer Look
  
• Testing
  
• Conclusion
  

The market of computer hardware took its current shape quite a long time ago and we can easily enumerate the names of manufacturers of this or that type of equipment. On the other hand, each growing company expresses a strong desire to venture into a new segment of the PC market.

The desire alone is not enough, though, as it is also necessary to offer something exciting and special, so that the potential customer would recognize the new product in the computer shop. Zalman, a company well-known to many PC users, has chosen exactly this scenario of conquering a market, quite alien to it before.

Zalman is a name strongly associated with coolers for CPUs and graphics cards, with power supply units and system cases. So when I heard this company to have entered the market of PC multimedia devices, I was really astonished. Zalman started its activities in the field by releasing the external multi-channel ZM-RSSC audio card, the ZM-RSA microphone amplifier, and the curious ZM-RS6F headphones.

The last product mentioned will actually be the main character of this review.

The device is waiting for its buyer in this original packaging

First of all, let’s take a look at the specification of the device. This information can be found right on the package of the headphones.

Specification

I’d like to draw your attention to the low input resistance (impedance), which is only 16 Ohms in the ZM-RS6F. In practice, this is a warning sign to you with respect to the volume level of the audio source – be careful when raising the volume control of the amplifier to the maximum. For note: the impedance typically lies in a range of 32 Ohms to 120 Ohms for high-quality headphones with an open acoustic enclosure (for example, 120 Ohms for the Sennheiser HD 590 and 32 Ohms for the Technics RP-F10). On the other hand, it’s clear even from the specification that the reviewed headphones are no Hi-Fi: the declared range of reproduced frequencies (50 – 20,000Hz) won’t impress an audiophile.

The manufacturer doesn’t say anything about the sensitivity of the headphones, but declares their sound pressure level, a rare item in such specifications (many people are accustomed to determine the class of headphones by their sensitivity parameter).