Gaming has always been about forgetting the world; getting so lost in the game universe that you forget you are actually playing a game. Amazing audio is pivotal in achieving an immersive and rich gaming experience. When we look at dedicated gaming headsets, many are stuck to the home, forcing gamers to buy multiple headsets for all the things they love – one for their PC rig, another for the console, and yet another for the smartphone or tablet while on the go. Our design directive was first and foremost to create a headset that prioritizes comfort and creates an amazing sensory experience. Second, we had to ensure that it would deliver the incredible sound and features that Logitech G players have come to love and expect, and even offer some improvements. Lastly, we ensured that the headset can seamlessly transition across the different aspects of a gamer’s life.
In pursuit of these goals, we spent a lot of time talking with gamers. And we looked at leaders in other industries to see how they use advanced materials and innovative design to create high performance products that are meant to be worn. The result of our research and development is the new G433 gaming headset, a new category of headset that is extremely lightweight and comfortable and it also includes all the advanced audio technologies and performance you’ve come to expect from Logitech G.
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| Many different textures and patterns of material were sampled to find the right feel and properties for the G433 Gaming Headset. |
Designed for Comfort
G433 started with a different design philosophy from other gaming headsets. Tons of headsets are simply electronics that are strapped to your head. We took a page from other industries, specifically the sports and active wear industries, when looking at the materials and design of G433 to make it a pleasure to touch and wear. At 259g, the G433 is the lightest over-ear headset we have ever designed, yet it still packs a supersonic punch.
Materials Meant to Be Worn
Headsets are designed to be worn on your head - touching your skin for long periods of time. Yet many headset designs use uncomfortable materials, like leatherette ear-pads, that aren’t the type of thing most people would wear. Similarly, some headset designs are large and heavy, making long gaming sessions leave you a sticky, sweaty mess. Leather pants sound cool, but are anything but cool in practice. We wanted to choose materials that were lightweight and comfortable to touch but also durable and resistant to staining.
We use super comfortable, breathable sports mesh material on the ear pads and on the outside of the
ear cups to make them nice to touch and to keep your head cool while gaming, listening or on the move.
The ear pads are hand washable and the ear cups have a hydrophobic coating to ensure they keep their color and stay clean. We use three different types of plastic on the headband and ear cup assembly toprovide the different levels of flexibility and strength required by a gaming headset, as well as a steel-reinforced headband to ensure durability. We also include a set of microfiber ear pads which have a tighter fit and a different feel, because we know you like options.
Custom Designed Ear Pads
The removable ear pad design is the most complex we have ever designed - with 6 different panels and five different materials. Traditional ear pad materials, such as leatherette, can be sticky and accelerate fatigue over long wearing sessions. Nobody likes swamp ear, so we focused on creating ear pads that are lightweight and cool. We iterated over many different shapes and materials to ensure the G433 ear-pads deliver optimal temperature and moisture control, while also providing an incredible acoustic experience.
G433 Gaming Headset is designed to give gamers a great audio experience no matter what the source. It doesn’t matter if you are using the provided USB sound card on a PC, listening to music or calls on a mobile phone, gaming on any console or watching movies on a plane, G433 has clear, low-distortion audio quality with rich low end, punchy mids and soaring highs. With specially tuned patent pending Pro-G drivers, your favorite sounds will come to life.
Tuned for Analog
The G433 is the first headset from Logitech G to be tuned specifically for analog performance. With so many ways to use G433, we wanted to focus on the acoustic performance from analog sources. With digital focused headphones, engineers can use digital tuning to dial in a very exacting response with EQ and other software tools. An analog headset needs to be physically tuned to provide the best response possible, no matter where you plug the head set in.
Custom Acoustic Port and Chamber
The G433 features a specifically tuned acoustic port to allow the Pro-G speaker more freedom of
movement in the low-mid frequencies. This makes for a very powerful and rich low end response which is great for explosions in games and movies, kick drums in music, and other source material with a powerful low end. The acoustic chamber is a specially designed space behind the voice coil of the speaker that allows for air to move in a way that accentuates and attenuates different frequencies to provide the best sounding response from all frequencies in the range.
Pro-G drivers are at the heart of Logitech G audio. The G433 Gaming Headset is the third design using Pro-G drivers. The intent of the Pro-G driver design innovation is to minimize distortion that commonly occurs in headphone drivers. When producing lower frequencies (<1kHz), most speaker
diaphragms operate as a solid mass, like a piston in an engine, without bending. When producing many different frequencies at the same time, traditional driver designs can experience distortion caused by different parts of the diaphragm bending when other parts are not. This distortion
caused by rapid transition in the speaker material can be tuned and minimized by combining a more flexible material with a specially designed acoustic enclosure. We designed the hybrid-mesh material for the Pro-G driver, along with a unique speaker housing design, to allow for a more smooth transition of movement resulting in a more accurate and less distorted output. This design also yields a more efficient speaker due to less overall output loss due to distortion.
The result is an extremely accurate and clear sounding audio experience putting the gamer closer to the original audio of the source material.
Communication
Ever walked down a busy street in Manhattan or looked over the sea of workers in a full office building? Headphones. Everybody is talking on or listening to headphones of some sort. Voice communication in gaming is incredibly important, especially now with streaming, team games and Discord becoming so popular. G433 comes with two different microphones to make sure you have the right tool for the job. One is a noise canceling boom mic with a micro pop filter, and the other is a mobile microphone built into the mobile cable.
Noise Canceling Boom Mic
Everybody knows THAT guy who has the “noisy” mic. Pop filters are foam covers that limit the amount of distortion caused by wind/breath quickly passing over a microphone. Think about the sound of a rolled down window when driving fast, as the wind has a noisy rough sound as it rumbles around the opening on the window. Traditionally, pop filters are large foam covers that are installed over the entire microphone housing and are made of rough material that can cause small pockets to break up this air as it passes by. Traditional pop filters remove the distortion but also add overall size to the microphone.
erall size to the microphone.
Figure 6: Don’t settle for a big black fuzzy ball in your face while you communicate
Our engineers knew there had to be a way to achieve the same performance of a pop filter without covering the tip with a giant foam ball that sits in front of your mouth. This is especially valuable for streaming and broadcasting where audio communication can mean the difference between a win and a loss. Additionally, gaming streamers want to be the star, not have a giant foam ball blocking their face. The result is a very small but effective 5mm long cloth pop filter that sits over the microphone opening and helps keep communication audio clean by reducing the wind noise by up to 8dB.
When using the G433 with the USB digital sound card, the microphone has active noise canceling to remove hums and noise from the background to provide a clear communication scenario for PC gamers. When plugged into a standard soundcard, noise cancelling will only be available if that soundcard’s software and drivers support it.
DTS Headphone: X Surround Sound Technology
Using the provided USB digital sound card, gamers get access to great PC gaming features like DTS Headphone: X Surround Sound. DTS technology accurately replicates a 7.1 surround speaker listening environment and audio positioning while watching multichannel video, music and games. DTS Headphone: X technology simulates the 3D environment of the audio’s original mixing stage making movies, music and games sound exactly the way the artist intended.
Multichannel and Stereo Audio Sources
How multichannel audio is presented in headphones can be confusing when using headphones as you only have two speakers on either side of your head. When using DTS Headphone: X, users can place themselves in a 7.1 speaker environment regardless of whether they are listening to a multichannel source like a movie or game with multichannel output, or a stereo source like most music or older movies and games. With stereo content, the user will hear the source out of either the right or left channel of the virtual surround listening environment. With multichannel content, G433 is presented to windows as a multichannel surround sound device, meaning the right channels are sent to the device for DTS Headphone: X software to place the source in the right “place” in the stereo field, creating the surround effect.
Designed to Fit Your Lifestyle
Headphones are an ever increasingly popular way to get listen to the many sounds we enjoy. From PC Gaming to console gaming, from listening to music on a train to watching crappy movies on an airplane, we always have a use for great headphones. We wanted G433 to meet or exceed the expectations of the user no matter how they are using the headset.
PC Gaming
PC gaming is the core reason why we exist at Logitech G. G433 has our best PC gaming features and capabilities. With the included USB digital sound card, gamers can connect the analog goodness of G433 acoustic character to digital features like DTS Headphone: X surround sound technology, custom 10 band EQ and profile support using Logitech Gaming Software. With the excellent quality boom mic, players can chat, stream and scream with noise canceling and micro pop filter to ensure only the right stuff gets through.
PC Gaming Cables and Adapters
There are a few ways that you can connect to a gaming PC to get the full capabilities of G433. The most common would be connecting the PC gaming cable to the headset and to the USB digital sound card connected to the PC. This enables both DTS and LGS features. The PC gaming cable has a mic mute control and a volume wheel for manual adjustment while gaming. With the PC cable’s crosstalkpreventing 5-pole, dual-ground design, the sounds from the microphone will never bleed into the headphone signal or vice versa, a common problem with gaming headsets. G433 also comes with a Ysplitter cable to break the 4-pole connector into separate headphone and mic connections for connection to your PC’s existing sound card. Losing your mic is not fun, so we created a boom mic holder to attach the boom mic to the PC Cable. Once you get back to your gaming desk, your mic will be waiting for you!
NOTE: The PC Cable features no-crosstalk technology, because your friends don’t need to hear your game audio mixed inadvertently into your mic signal. This is a common problem with gaming headsets. The PC Cable also has a unique cable design which is only possible to plug in the right way, making proper connection foolproof.
Console Gaming
G433 comes equipped to connect to a wide variety of consoles, including the new Nintendo Switch, for audio and communication. You can connect either the PC cable to the headset and then to the controller to use the boom mic or use the mobile cable to use the in line mic.
Mobile and On-The-Go
This is where a lot of gaming headsets fail, the task of taking your audio with you wherever you go. We wanted to make G433 not only comfortable and compatible in many scenarios but also look like it belongs to an adult who has conversations with other adults about things that aren’t pizza rolls or anime. With many colors to choose, and with the materials we use to build the G433, we think it’s a pretty nice looking headset. But it’s not all vanity here at Logitech G, we’re serious about function as well. With features like the mobile cable, with in-line microphone and mobile phone control button, you get excellent audio performance and comfort while not compromising on features and functionality.
NOTE: The mobile cable also has unique cross talk reduction design to minimize audio bleed between mic and speakers.
Analog Sources
The focus on designing for analog audio performance means no matter what you plug the G433 into, it will sound great. Because of the high efficiency of the Pro-G driver, many headphone amps built into phones, laptops and even high end DACs and sound cards will perform incredibly well with G433. We challenge users to put G433 up against much more expensive high end headphones, we think the proof is in the pudding.
Logitech Gaming Software™
By using Logitech Gaming Software™ (LGS), gamers can customize and adjust their G433 Gaming Headset when using the Digital USB Sound Card. With so many different preferences available to PC gamers, having flexibility and options in an easy to use format is crucial. LGS offers a wide range of customization in a user-friendly interface for all Logitech G products. Users can adjust EQ, create pergamer profiles for every setting, change DTS Headphone:X settings and more for the G433.
NOTE: To download LGS, if you don’t already have it, simply navigate to the following URL, select 32bit or 64-bit, and click “Download” http://support.logitech.com/en-us/software/lgs G433 Gaming Headset Reviewer’s Guide 9
Customize Audio Experience
The “Customize Audio Experience” tab allows users to change their EQ and volume levels for the headset. G433 uses a firmware based EQ for more accurate and extremely powerful EQ control. Due to the low distortion handling of audio and the powerful Pro-G speakers, this headset can handle wild variations in EQ without causing distortion or other audio anomalies. Users can store EQ profiles to the internal memory of the headset when taking the headset to other computers that don’t have LGS installed like a LAN center or a friend’s house. Users can also adjust the “Side Tone” level, the amount of microphone input that is mixed into the headphone so users can hear themselves while wearing headphones. This makes it easier for gamers to hear what is going on off the screen while gaming.
Users can create a custom EQ setting by clicking the “+” button, then rename and adjust the different frequencies. To adjust different settings for specific applications using per-profile mode, enable the menu by clicking “enable per profile equalizer”. This menu works exactly like other per-profile settings.
Per-Game Profile Support
By using LGS, users can set up per-game profiles to automatically adjust certain aspects of Logitech G products when launching an application. This allows users to set up specific EQ or surround sound settings specifically for each game automatically. Almost every setting in LGS with all Logitech G products can be set to automatically apply in per-profile mode.
Users can dial in their settings to get the perfect experience automatically with any application and manually add any application to create a profile for it. To enable per-profile settings, simple click the radio button on the tab you want to apply and start assigning settings.
Customize Surround Sound
The Customize Surround Sound tab allows users to adjust the DTS Headphone: X modes and settings. To enable this feature, click on the “power” button (or better yet, assign a G-Key!) DTS Headphone: X simulates different listening rooms for multi-channel audio sources. There are three different listening rooms to choose from using the “Surround Sound” menu and each one is slightly different.
For stereo audio sources, the “DTS Super Stereo Modes” will automatically be used. “Stereo Front” will bring the left and right channels more in line with the front of the sound stage best used for shooters and other upfront action games, and “Stereo Wide” will pan out the left and right channels for a mode cinematic experience. Users can play around with the settings to find the perfect balance for their personal taste. Users can also adjust the individual speaker levels using the “Speaker mixer” to place the surround sound sources in “their right place”. We understand that everyone’s ears are different, and being able to adjust the settings is a powerful part of what makes the G433 capable of great surround sound.
Users can also enable per-profile settings to change surround sound settings for individual applications. This can be powerful as some games are better with stereo (like Counter Strike), but there are many games that have award-winning multi-channel audio (like Battlefield 1) and applications that almost always want surround sound like VLC player for movies and multi-channel music.
Testing G433 Gaming Headset Custom EQ Settings
The G433 features a digital soundcard/DAC which means you can take advantage of our 10 Band EQ in the LGS software. You can save an unlimited number of custom EQ settings, and can even be assigned “per profile” to give specific apps different EQ settings automatically.
We encourage gamers to take advantage of our very flexible and patent pending Pro-G audio drivers and customize the EQ to your taste. Even with super heavy bass settings, the driver will not distort.
Testing: We suggest create a bass heavy, flat and “tuned for you” profile and switch between with something you are very familiar with like the soundtrack to “The Witcher”.
Listening for: Bass notes that thump sharp, many drivers/amps lack power to pull back that bass and leave you with a thud and muddy sound.
Microphone Testing
Our microphones are designed more for esports and gaming raids than for your future on ‘the Voice’. We are focused on clarity of the vocal EQ band and use a similar tuning to that used by military communication devices and software. That being said, we think you will really appreciate the sound when you testing for clarity.
Testing:
We suggest using Audacity (or other similar audio recording program) for recording voice samples. Make sure you go to “recording devices” and “properties” in your controls and set the microphone to the highest bit rate and sample rate available. Check in LGS that your noise cancelling is turned off, for initial tests. Turn it back on for comparison; it does however work best when removing a constant low noise like the hum of an air conditioner or fan.
Noise Canceling (PC USB) Noise cancelling is designed to remove the noise floor or a consistent noise you may have the background, it is not going to remove the sudden bark of a dog or something hitting the microphone. Cross Talk Cross talk is a common problem that plagues many gaming headsets where the signal from one cable is passed on to or leaks into another. This is often caused by a common ground or poor twisting or cable quality, but not always.
You may have seen posts on reddit where people say “my friends hear my music or game over chat? How do I turn that off?” This is caused by crosstalk, which is electronic bleed of signals from unshielded cables being next to each other in a long run of cable from headset to PC or DAC. When they are broadcasting chat or voice the sound running down the cables of your headset may jump or leak over to the microphone input. This is NOT because the mic is picking up the sound coming from the actual headset.
We solved this problem by using a 5 pole double grounded cable with a no error plug design. We ensured that you will not have folks hear your music, game or movies over your chat and they hear just your voice.
Testing: Use Audacity or another recording program to record your voice but turn up the volume output of Spotify or another audio source with a non-Logitech G gaming headset (Cloud II, Kraken, ect…). Record the mic signal with and without the loud headphone audio source to test the level of crosstalk on a particular headset.
Surround Sound Testing
Surround sound isn’t for everyone, but it can be amazing at getting you deeper into the experience of your favorite RPG or perhaps you watch movies on your PC. DTS Headphone: X creates a virtual listening environment similar to an actual 7.1 speaker set up in a room. This can be great for multichannel content as it really gives a sense of space using only headphones.
Testing: We recommend using a true multichannel 5.1/7.1 piece of source material, there are many great oldies but goodies like Quadraphonic music “Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd or Queen’s “Night at the opera”, but you can also get new albums in surround like, Beck’s “Sea Change”. We also recommend just listening to a multichannel movie like “Guardians of the Galaxy” or “Interstellar”.
We also have a nifty surround testing file in the LGS software. Go to our surround page in LGS and hit the test button!
Surround Sound Games
There is a great list of games and what type of audio engine and channel support they offer here:
http://satsun.org/audio/ Analog Audio Testing Choosing High Res Audio FLAC and AAC are often listed as lossless. Both are great formats, we also recommend listening directly from an AIFF or old style CD product. Vinyl records also have great warmth and can provide unique emotion and musicality to certain performances and soundtracks.
Happy listening!
Specifications G433 Gaming Headset
Headphone:
Driver: 40 mm
Frequency response: 20Hz-20KHz
Impedance: 32 Ohms
Sensitivity: 107dB@1KHz SPL 30mW/1cm
Microphone:
Microphone Pickup Pattern: Cardioid (Unidirectional)
Type: Back Electret Condenser
Size: 4mm
Frequency response: 100Hz-10KHz
Physical Specs:
Length: 172 mm (6.77 in)
Width: 81.7 mm (3.22 in)
Height: 182 mm (7.17 in)
Weight (w/o cable): 259 g (9.14 oz)
PC Cable Length: 2 m (6.56 ft)
Mobile Cable Length: 1.5 m (4.92 ft)
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