Tritton AX Pro Headset

[SquidgeyFlint (admin)]

I recently (just today) replaced my Tritton AX360's with their 'new' AXPro headset and there are a few differences that I wanted to mention.

The back story:
Firstly, the only reason I replaced my trusty AX360's is that I basically broke them by inadvertantly carving junks of the headphone cable out b/c it was underneath something sharp when I tugged on it. I'd have to fiddle with the cable to get sound on left side and they'd been getting progressively worse until they stopped working altogethor. There's a lot of wires in that cable. Enough to drive 8 speakers and I wasn't up for not being able to game while I tried to cut and solder and get it all put back togethor right.

With this in mind I sprung for the new AXPro headset because I couldn't get my hands on the AX51's which would plug into my existing control box with a little adapter, and because I wanted to finally get separate voice channel volume control.

The differences:

The control box:
the AX360 supported both Optical and Coax hookups. The AX Pro supports optical and USB (?). Besides that difference, the box is exactly the same, except that the AXPro is a shiny grey and the AX360 is matte light blue.

The power plug:
The wallwart / transformer that comes with the AXPro is smaller and the power output is similar but not quite the same. More importantly however, there are 2 power outputs: 1 for the control box and one for the headset (!). (more on this in a bit)

The Headset:
The headset is really different physically. The AX360 was super comfortable with oval earcups and is basically modeled after a nice pair of audio headphones. The AXPro is pretty different. The earcups are square and headband isn't as flexible. The AXPro comes with foam earcups and headrest and these are replacable with leather ones that cone in the box, are fairly easy to switch and are far more comforable than the foam ones. My ears end up sliding kind of inside the square earcups vs the large over the ear cup of the AX360. New to the AXPro is a backlit Tritton logo on each ear cup.

The inline volume controller:
The AXPro is radically different than the A360. Gone are the 4 individual thumbwheels for front, center, surround, and rumble on the sleek inline controller. The AXPro has a digital inline controller, with backlit buttons to select front, center, surround, sub (different than rumble) with an up/down thumbcontrol (like a wheel but only goes back and forth and not all the way 'round). The thumb control is a master volume control by default. Pressing any one of the buttons will let you control the volume of that 'channel' more or less using the thumb controller.

Also interesting is that the backlighting actually changes color as you work through some pretermined bands. From lowest volume to highest is green, blue, white, cyan, and red. The button for each 'channel' reflects the color of the volume band.

Also new to the inline controller on the AXPro are the Xbox Live voice control panel on the right edge. There's a mic mute slide switch, a voice volume thumbwheel, and jack to plug in your from the voice jack on the 360's controller.

The Microphone:
The mic was the most troublesome part of the AX360. It was basically a boom mic that just stuck on the side of the headphones with a separate cable that ran to the 360's controller. This thing fell off easily and the 2nd wire was a drag. The AXPro cleans this all up by having the mic plug directly into the headphone and 'lock' into place. Integrated into the unit now, the mic is wired through the main cable down to the inline controller where it then jacks out to the 360 controller.

The "Wire":
The Tritton headsets are wired which means you have a nice long cable to run from the control box to the headset. The cable on the AXPro is less flexible than the AX360 but it does have an extra set of connectors towards the headset end. Tritton claims this is a "break-a-way" cable but seeing how tight a fit that connector makes, there's no easy disconnect here should the dog run across. It does make for a quick disconnect if you want to leave the room and not take the headset off. The extra cable for Xbox Live Voice is pushed down to the inline controller and cleans it up a little. There is a second power plug that powers the inline controller and the fancy lights in the headphone earcups. This second plug breaks out way down at the furthest edge of the cable, keeping it nice and neat.

The Sound:
The AXPros sound pretty similar to the AX360's. According to the website, they tightened up the sound a bit and replaced the 'rumble' function with a real subwoofer speaker. I haven't gotten to try this out yet (I need to find a surround sound test disc to tune them anyway).


I need to find a little stereo patch cable so that I can get my xbox live voice chat on. It comes with the old school 360 hookup dongle, the one that doesn't work with chatpad

All in all I like them well enough in the first 30 minutes. The clearly took a step backwards in headset comfort but the new inline controller is great, especially the separate XBL Chat controls. The backlit everything and extra power plug has some 'flash' that I can't say I needed, although the color coded volume level bands are a nice touch, even if I didn't need them.

[Yardarm51 (mod)]

Cheers for the review Squidge. My AX360s are getting a bit dog eared and I'm going to need to replace them sooner or later so I'm glad to see a review by someone else who has used the old 360s and can make a direct comparison.

[1million {council}]

There is a thread for headsets.

[SquidgeyFlint (admin)]

There is a thread for headsets.

I didn't think that all reviews / comments about specific headsets would make sense to be hidden in a single thread about people speaking up about what they use. Reviews of individual headsets should probably be in their own threads so that we can find them, etc.

[slapshotsal]

This is the headset I use and really like them. Now, not having used a headset prior to these I have not noticed some of the things (shape of ear cup, weight, etc.) Squid mentioned.

Of course now I am thinking about the earcup shape and weight of them. Thanks a lot.

[SquidgeyFlint (admin)]

I notice that the headset stays powered even when you turn off the control box. That's kind of a drag. I also thought I noticed last night that the headset doesn't actually work until it is powered separately which is also a drag. I would guess this is b/c of the fancy inline volume controller.

I will also note that the patch cable needed to hook up live chat is a standard 3.5mm headphone jack on the trident side and the usual 2.5mm headphone jack on the xbox controller side which is is a drag since that means the cable I had won't work.

So far I'm having mixed reactions with this headset which makes me sad when they cost so much.

[serenityman]

I just got my replacement AX Pro's a couple weeks ago and was happy to see that I got the newer model. I bought mine back in August of 2009 and after a couple of months, I had major issues with the voice chat cutting in and out or not working at all. Many replacement wires and a different headset never fixed the problem. So I sent the entire unit back to have it all replaced. The newer model has a few improvements.

First, there is only one AC plug, where the old one had two.

Second, the chat wire included with the older model only had a 2.5mm pin at the end where you plug it in to the xbox controller. It actually seemed like it was not exactly 2.5mm but just slightly smaller because it never fit snug and would come out very easily. On the newer model, that end of the chat wire has a plastic housing around the 2.5mm pin, so it locks into place when you plug it in (like the original model xbox live headset).

So far, the new set hasn't displayed any of the chat problems I was having and as always, I still think they sound great.