HARDWARE REVIEW

LucidSound LS-30 Review

by Luke Walsh, December 4th, 2016

Gaming audio has gone from strength to strength in recent years, more gamers these days are looking for more than just earbuds for their sound experience when playing video games. This is partly due to the fact of next-gen consoles and big budget titles are bringing in famous composers, musicians and orchestras. With technology delivering more speed, more bandwidth and more clarity audio has gone from the 8-bit to fully immersive experiences and instant voice-chat.

From these changes in the industry, hardware that we use had to keep up with those advancements and is seeing more budget and more attention thrown at it. LucidSound is the first of its kind to bring out a headset designed for gaming but not to look like your standard gaming headset full of bells, whistles and LEDs. They have tried to go for a different take on the market by delivering headsets which you can also use when you are out and about with your mobile phone, while delivering good audio performance.

From the moment you take it out of the box, it has an impact. You’ll instantly know that this is not any ordinary gaming headset, from the packaging to the inner contents, it looks more like a high-end headset from places such as Sennheiser. However if you are thinking, is this really a gaming headset, then I am happy to tell you that it is. From the outside, the LS-30 does look like something you would find in a high-end department store and with a price tag of £129-150 it definitely positions itself in the mid to high-end market, but has been designed for gamers that don’t want to feel silly wearing really bulky and sometimes gimmicky headsets in public.

LucidSound have made a gaming headset look sleek and succeeded with the black faux leather and brushed metal. The LS-30 can also be bought in a white/gold combination but at the time of review we were sent the black/silver version of the headset. All the parts are well made, the earcups are memory foam wrapped in faux leather and are not only comfortable to wear but big enough that your ears won’t feel constricted and get sweaty. Some headsets with faux leather do have an issue with wearing away after long consistent sessions but, after about 150 hours of use I can easily say that the leather-type material is still pretty much the same from when they were first used.

One microphone is detachable, which is meant to give the option in the daytime to go out “in disguise” as a normal headset. Plugging in the boom mic is an easy task and stays in the position you set with a rigid wire design. A neat addition is when the mic is muted you’ll see a little blue LED at the end of it to show you the mic is muted. In darker settings though the glare from the blue LED can be a little off putting, as where you would naturally place the mic is still in your peripheral vision. If you decide you don’t want to use the external mic, then the LS-30 also has a built in mic which is not bad when needed. As there is no control of the direction of the built-in microphone, the voice clarity is not as clear as the boom mic but having both is a nice feature.

When you do decide to go without the mic, it does look exactly like any other high-end headset you’d see, along with a 3.5mm cable it is quite easy to use it for your mobile phone or any audio device. When the headset is turned off or out of battery, it will still work in passive mode but you’ll lose out on the extra additional amplified volume you get when the headset is switched on. Both microphones will also work in passive mode but the boom mic just won’t displayed the LED when it is muted.

Aside from the headset in the box you’ll find, a 3.5mm headphone audio cable which can be used with mobile phones, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It also comes with an additional cable for the Xbox 360, a micro USB charging cable and the USB dongle which transmits the audio wirelessly from your PC or via the PS4 or X1.

The optical cable might seem like a strange addition but the USB dongle features an optical port. With the included optical cable you can connect this to the wireless dongle and then plug it into an Xbox One or PlayStation 4, from there you can connect the other end of the optical cable to the console and it will send the clean sound through the dongle to the headset wirelessly. This is a really good inclusion on LucidSound’s part because it bypasses the game controller and allows you to send the crisp audio straight to the headset.

The wireless capabilities are pretty decent as well, with the headset not connected I was able to walk around most of the house and into other rooms without it cutting out and this included being able to listen to audio and chat. On their website the range states about 30ft which seems about right but thick concrete wall will reduce that range through interference.

Audio performance on the LS-30 is decent but does fail to offer more than just a stereo output which makes it one of its only downfalls for its price range. Not matter how you connect it, the LS-30 will only ever push just that and cannot do anything more with a 7.1 or Dolby, DTS audio source. In terms of the audio equalizer the headset has three different options, even audio, bass boosted and treble boosted. These are hardcoded into the headset and should be fine for most gamers but for those really wanted the full range it is fairly limited. When switching between the different settings, you’ll hear a beep and you should be able to tell what one you are one but it would of been nice to have a little more of an audio or visual cue.

Out of the box, the sound delivers a fairly even performance but does seem to prefer the lower end of the scale which is probably where the gaming oriented design seeps through. Playing a game like Battlefield 4 was loud, bassy and explosions rocked but if you needed just a little bit of delicacy sometimes this could be filtered out by the overpowering bass.

In terms of loudness, the LS-30 is great, with 50mm drivers and powered up in active mode you’ll be able to crank them up as loud as your ears can take it and won’t be able to hear anything externally. It is worth noting though that at the higher volume levels for closed off earcups, the sound does get through quite a lot with other people being able to hear what you are listening to. This is not really much of a problem when gaming but if you use them out and about their noise suppression inside the earcup could be much better. When working in passive mode, the audio is still fairly loud and works at volume levels similar to most unpowered headsets.

From a glance, the headset looks like it does not come with many buttons and this is where the design is really neat. In many gaming headsets usually the buttons are on the cable or packed into every nook on the headset, but with the LS-30 they have hidden a lot of their controls as part of the design. Around the outer rim of each earcup are spinnable dials which control the volume of the 50mm drivers and the chat audio, this keeps them really neat but makes finding them at any point effortless and stops from accidental presses. On each side of the ear cup are also two buttons, pushing each cup in bring a nice click and will mute either the in-game volume or chat. The left cup deals with the in-game sound and the right cup looks after the chat.

The only difficulty you may find is actually knowing where all the controls are, even when telling you in this review if you were to read the instructions it is a little unclear. This is more aimed towards the volume control dials which sit on the outer part of the earcup but are flushed with the designed, you kind of have to know they are there, rather than them being quite instinctive to use.

Overall, the Lucid Sound LS30 headset is going to best serve those who like to get more than one type of use of of their products. It lacks some features that some gamers might like such as not lighting, 7.1 surround sound audio which can be associated with higher end gear but for what it has set out to do, it does pretty damn well. It is an absolutely solid choice for your gaming audio, being able to deliver a good range and battery life while also being of a design you could take outside the house and not look strange. The LS-30’s do quite well as a first product for LucidSound at trying to hit both the gaming market and audio market for a reasonable price.