Ashampoo MP3 Cover Finder review: Organize your playlists—for a price

You're an audiophile and a neat freak. Years of burning CDs onto your computer have left your digital music library a tattered mess of unnamed tracks by unknown artists—and it's driving you nuts.

You can go through and name them one by one, but that would be an annoying slog, and it wouldn't solve the blank album cover problem. Ashampoo MP3 Cover Finder to the rescue!

Adding songs to the program is an easy process using one of the five options.

MP3 Cover Finder works well, there's no doubt about that. It found art for every obscure song I could throw at it, pulling from sources including Amazon, Bing, Google, and iTunes to find the correct cover art and track information. If it couldn't use its fingerprint technology to identify the MP3 via metadata and file names, it still came up with the best match from all the information provided.

In my cruelest test, I used an unreleased song for which the artist is presumed but not confirmed and the title is just a rumor. It managed to find some generic cover art of the presumed band photos as well as some fan-made art for the song. The service works great.

Ashampoo MP3 Cover Finder couldn't be simpler to use, either. Clicking the "Add" button brings up five different ways to add songs: a single file, a whole folder, your dedicated music folder, drag and drop, or from your iTunes. The songs load up, and the software asks if you'd prefer to find the covers immediately or later. The process could take anywhere from two to ten minutes depending on how many songs you choose: It's off scouring the Internet and file data for the correct information, and these things take time.

The program will load up the songs and scour the internet for the proper covers and data. Be patient!

Hitting the Optimize button lets you select which tracks to change and which options to apply. It automatically clears any manual data and selects the highest rated cover to apply, so you don't have to manually select data for each song.

Despite its usefulness and simplicity, there are major drawbacks. The initial price is $30 for a one-year license. After that you'll have to extend it, presumably by paying for another year, to continue using the product. That's a hefty subscription just to organize your music library. The changes stay in effect, of course, so any improvements made remain after your subscription expires.

Ashampoo MP3 Cover Finder lets you store only 1000 songs at one time as well. Throwing your entire library into the fray takes a few steps. You can load all your songs, optimize them and find the covers, and then clear them out to make room for others. It's a hassle for those with huge libraries, but won't likely affect the majority.

Vendor Ashampoo doesn't bill the program as a music player by any means, and other than quick preview of the song it shouldn't be used as such. Double-clicking a song begins to play it, but there's no way to queue up more. You can click around while a song is playing to review and edit metadata, but the music player doesn't display the current song that's playing. This makes editing a song manually frustrating and confusing, since you can't be sure if the song you're listening to is the song you have selected without double-clicking again and restarting the song.

The user interface is simple and easy to use. Your songs are on the left, available covers are on the right and all the song's information is in the center.

Those who can't stand the blank covers and mislabeled songs when setting up playlists on a phone or MP3 player will get a kick out of Ashampoo MP3 Cover Finder and will make the steep price tag worth it. However, anyone short of being a music organization freak won't get the same value. You'll get a good one-time use for the initial 20-30 songs that have been evading your labeling and then sit dormant until it's time to renew.

Alex covers desktops, everything from fancy to practical. He's also an avid (addicted) gamer and loves following the industry.
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New HTC Desire 300 and 601 offer big power, low price

As the IFA trade show is set to get underway in Berlin this week, smart phone leader HTC is hitting the ground running with an expansive announcement that broadens its mobile device lineup, particularly extending its reach into the midrange phone market.

The new additions to HTC’s lineup are the Desire 300 and Desire 601 handsets. Both are designed to bring ample, portable power to a phone with a more modest price than the HTC One line.

The Desire 300 is the more basic of the two models, but it still packs plenty of power. Primary features include a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor, 512MB of RAM, and a 4.3-inch screen with resolution at 800 x 480 pixels. There’s 4GB of storage space, plus you get room for up to 64GB of additional storage capacity via a microSD expansion slot. Shutterbugs will find a single rear-facing camera, with a 5-megapixel lens, available for photo needs. Under the hood, the Desire 300 runs the Android 4.1.2 operating system.

The Desire 601 upgrades these specs by offering a 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 8GB of built-in storage (plus a 64GB-max microSD slot), and a full 1GB of RAM. The screen bumps things up a bit to a 4.5-inch display with HD-quality resolution of 960 x 540 pixels. As well, the Desire 601 upgrades its camera with a second, front-facing lens that offers 1.4 megapixels of resolution. Android 4.2.2 powers the handset.

With these phones, HTC is extending its specific focus on entertainment and social media through a couple of key upgrades. On the Desire 601, HTC BoomSound stereo speakers provide high-fidelity audio output that few phones can match. With rich and authentic sound quality, BoomSound combines with the phone’s spacious screen to give users a true “home theater on the go” experience.

On both the Desire 601 and 300, the HTC BlinkFeed system puts all of your content front and center where you want it the most: on your phone’s home screen. Add social media feeds and news sources to BlinkFeed, and every time you check your phone, you’ll find it updated with the latest information from all of these outlets. No need to check a dozen different sites for news and status updates; BlinkFeed puts everything in one place.

Both phones are set to launch in October of this year. Pricing has not yet been announced (except that they’ll be cheaper than the One line). All in all, this is good news for phone shoppers who have been enamored with HTC’s design aesthetic and its unique features (like BlinkFeed), but who have found the HTC One line to be a bit too expensive.

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Microsoft's Surface slates get permanent price drops, cheaper Touch Covers

Not that Microsoft was fooling anyone before, but the Surface tablet discounts that the company previously advertised as “limited time” are now permanent.

The Surface RT will remain priced at $349 for 32 GB, and $449 for 64 GB, a discount of $150 in both cases. Microsoft is also offering a black Touch Cover bundle with both Surface RT models for an additional $50.

The Surface Pro retains its $100 discount on all models, bringing the price to $799 for 64 GB and $899 for 128 GB. No Touch Cover or Type Cover bundles are available with the Surface Pro.

Microsoft has also slashed the price of its standalone Touch Cover accessories by $40. Regular covers now cost $80, and Limited Edition covers are $90. Pricing for the Type Cover, which has actual mechanical keys compared to the Touch Cover's pressure-sensitive sensors, remains at $130.

Microsoft's struggles to sell the Surface are no secret. Last month, the company revealed that it would take a $900 million writedown on the Surface RT, as the company slashed prices in hopes of unloading excess inventory. It's unlikely that Surface Pro sales are much better, given that Microsoft spent more to advertise the tablet and Windows 8 than it actually earned in Surface revenue.

On the plus side, the price cuts have sent Surface RT usage skyrocketing over the past months.

Tech-savvy consumers, however, might want to stay away from these permanent price cuts, with the possibility of new Surface models around the corner. The Surface Pro, in particular, would greatly benefit from Intel's Haswell processors , which offer big improvements to battery life. It's unclear when Microsoft will launch new Surface tablets, but something timed around the October 18 launch of Windows 8.1 would make sense.

According to ZDNet, Microsoft will be rolling out the price adjustments in phases, “in order to meet customer demand and retailer expectations.” Check Microsoft's Surface Website for details.

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Analysts push iPhone 5C price predictions to $450

Computerworld - Some analysts have rethought their expectations on the price of Apple's expected lower-end iPhone 5C, and now believe the Cupertino, Calif. company will play defense by charging as much as $450 for the new plastic smartphone.

"In terms of unsubsidized pricing, I don't see any way the iPhone 5C can be priced below $400," Sameer Singh, an analyst who writes on Tech-Thoughts.com, said in a post Monday. "I think Apple is leaning towards $450 ... [although] they could go as low as $400 if it helps facilitate a deal with China Mobile."

China Mobile, the world's largest mobile carrier, has yet to strike a deal with Apple to carry the iPhone, although Apple CEO Tim Cook has met at least twice this year with company executives.

As recently as two weeks ago, Singh had pegged the iPhone 5C's unsubsidized price at $399.

Ben Thompson, who covers a variety of topics, including smartphones, on his Stratechery blog, also has reconsidered his iPhone 5C price bet. In a post last week, Thompson said he is now leaning toward $450 for the plastic-cased smartphone, an increase from his previous maximum of $399.

The pricing dilemma that Apple faces, said Singh, is that it simply cannot compete at the very lowest end -- the under-$200 unsubsidized price point -- that is the volume driver in emerging markets. Trying to do so would not only reduce profit margins, something Apple has always been loath to do, but the device would not be up to its self-set standards. Producing a cheap smartphone simply to get into the lowest category would not only damage Apple's brand but be contrary to consistent comments by executives, particularly Cook, who has repeatedly said that Apple would not chase market share for its own sake.

But if it cannot effectively compete at the low end, Apple risks losing revenue by pricing the iPhone 5C too low.

"A substantial cut in the iPhone 5C's unsubsidized price is unlikely to increase volumes in subsidized markets, but Apple would effectively be 'leaving money on the table,' especially in Apple's core, subsidized markets," said Singh.

Currently, Apple sells three models at three different price points: the iPhone 5 for $650 unsubsidized, $199 with a contract; the iPhone 4S ($550/$99); and the iPhone 4 ($450/$0).

If it can't reach an unsubsidized price significantly lower than the current lowest -- $450 -- there's no reason to bother, Singh said, as it would only cannibalize sales of the iPhone 4 price point with an even cheaper iPhone 5C, reducing its revenue in developed markets like the U.S. by the difference.

A $350 unsubsidized price for the iPhone 5C would, in other words, cost Apple $100 per unit in missed revenue. Customers would still get a "free" iPhone, but carriers would be paying Apple less than they do now for the two-year-old iPhone 4.

That's a path Apple's unlikely to take.

"[$450] would not help Apple compete much more effectively in unsubsidized/prepaid markets," Singh said. "[But] I think Apple may be incredibly wary of leaving 'money on the table' and is likely to opt for a pricing strategy that is defensive rather than one that eliminates the 'price umbrella' for competitors."

Apple is expected to unveil its new iPhones, including the iPhone 5C as well as a full-priced model to replace the iPhone 5, on Sept. 10, and start selling the new smartphones in a first wave of markets on Sept. 20.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at  @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

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Razer Tartarus Review: Half a keyboard for the exact same price

Razer Tartarus $80.00 Razer's new gaming keypad is a well-made piece of hardware you almost certainly don’t need.

There are two ways to evaluate the Razer Tartarus, Razer’s new gaming keypad. The first is as a piece of high-end gaming hardware for its own sake, and that’s where the Tartarus excels; it’s a well-made piece of hardware that feels good in your hand, especially when you adjust the palmrest to fit your needs. The Tartarus' 25 keys are all programmable using Razer’s Synapse software. Sure, Razer’s cheating a little bit here by counting the keypad's eight-way thumbpad as 8 separate buttons, but you can map command functions to each of the eight directions pretty easily so we’ll let it slide. It’s also highly portable and quick to set up, making it ideal for professional gamers or anyone who finds themselves moving between machines a lot.

The second way to evaluate the Tartarus is as a piece of gaming hardware somebody might choose to buy, and from that perspective it seems a bit pointless. I’m not entirely certain who would actually benefit significantly from learning to use the Tartarus.

Smooth design with a rough learning curveAll high-end gaming hardware comes with a learning curve; it's difficult to rewire your brain to activate your 1-9 keys with an MMO gaming mouse like Razer’s Naga, for instance. However, that initial time investment usually pays off with a big performance improvement once you’ve adjusted. The problem with the Tartarus is that even after you take the time to adjust to using it, I’m not convinced you see a meaningful benefit. Even when used to maximum effect, the Tartarus is still half a keyboard.

The best way to configure the thumbpad's eight directions is to set each one up as a "toggle" that changes the bindings on the other keys. When I first set up the Tartarus I thought the thumbpad and extra keys would be useful as a means of controlling my character's movement in games like Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft, essentially freeing up my Q, W, E, A, S, D keys and the space bar to be bound to something else. The problem with that plan, besides how awkward it is to adjust to steering my MMORPG characters with my thumb, is that it leaves only 15 keys within easy reach of my hands. I went back and forth between playing games with and without the Tartarus, realizing that I could actually reach more keys by focusing on just a traditional keyboard and mouse control scheme. These tests helped me understand that, in addition to having to relearn how to use my keybinds, using the Tartarus requires me to accept a net loss in the number of keys I have access to.

Razer might argue that the ability to program the Tartarus makes up for its lack of keys, and in a sense they would be right: configuration options abound as the Tartarus, like most Razer products, is customizable with Razer's Synapse software.

Some customization requiredIf you’ve ever used a Razer product in the past you’re probably already familiar with Synapse’s pros and cons. The app is flashier than it needs to be but highly customizable— letting you bind any key to a macro and letting those macros and keybinds talk to other Razer products so that you could, for example, press a key on your Razer mouse and swap key configurations on your Tartarus. If that sounds a little intimidating, it is; the customization options can get confusing, and it takes time to learn to use them properly.

Thankfully, customizing the Tartarus is a breeze in the Synapse interface. The best and worst feature of Synapse is that using it requires you to register an account with Razer. It’s the best feature because you only have to configure your Razer products once; those configurations are automatically saved to the cloud and downloaded automatically when you install Synapse on other computers, so you never have to configure a product twice no matter how many computers you hook it up to.

It’s the worst feature because the registration isn’t optional; if you want to use Synapse to configure a Razer product or take advantage of advanced product features like illumination controls or programmable macros, you have to register with Razer.

Since the Tartarus is a little bit outside of my gaming hardware comfort zone I tried to make the learning process easier by using Razer's Tartarus WoW addon. This lets you customize your keybinds in-game rather than swapping back and forth from Synapse to WoW which, in theory, should speed things up. Doing so taught me a few things about how Razer envisions players using the Tartarus; most importantly, Razer actually wants you to use the middle six buttons for movement, just like a regular keyboard configuration, and then use the thumbpad to swap between four key configurations on the fly, letting you multiply the 9 remaining buttons to 36 potential commands.

This alternate keybind configuration didn’t really help matters though. Besides it being an awkward play-style to adjust to (where did I put my taunt again? Oh right, it’s thumbstick down + key 9), the WoW Tartarus addon simply isn’t very good. It doesn’t play that nicely with other WoW addons, and it took me ten minutes to figure out I had to turn off another user interface element to even find the configuration button.

There's a Tartarus addon for WoW, but it's not very useful or attractive at this point. Once I had that working I learned that the Tartarus' WoW addon user interface wasn’t particularly customizable. There was no option I could find to turn off only part of the add-on’s display, so I was stuck looking at the useless bottom half of the overlay. Worse, there was no way I could find to use the addon to map buttons to basic WoW functions like, say, opening up menus, so I ended up needing to exit out of the program and configure with Synapse directly anyway.

My colleague Nate Ralph reviewed the Higher-End Razer Orbweaver earlier this year and came away feeling it too was a solid, if unnecessary, addition to Razer’s line-up of gaming peripherals. All of his critiques apply here as well, and they're exacerbated by the Tartarus' comparative lack of features. Even with access to the Orbweaver's 20 keys, Nate had trouble mapping all the things he needed.

Instead of just lopping off the right half of the keyboard, the Tartarus goes one step further and effectively does away with the 1-5 keys to boot. With just 3 rows of buttons on the keypad, I found myself constantly gravitating back to my traditional keyboard every time I was out of combat. It was the only way I could access enough buttons to open my bags, hop on my mount, or chat with my friends without any difficulty.

RazerThese keys aren't mechanical, and that's to be expected given the Tartarus' low price, but it's still kind of a bummer. A smaller nitpick that most userse won’t notice: the Tartarus also lacks the Orbweaver’s mechanical keys. It’s a subtle difference, but if you’re a mechanical keyboard user like me, it’s there.

Bottom lineOf course, with missing features comes a much lower price tag: the Tartarus knocks $60 dollars off of the Orbweaver’s $130 price. The problem is that $70 is still a lot to ask for an extraneous piece of hardware you’ll essentially have to use in concert with a regular keyboard. The paucity of keys on the Tartarus can be ameliorated somewhat by using an MMO gaming mouse festooned with buttons, but that requires you to spend even more money on hardware.

Still, if you’ve become accustomed to this style of play by using earlier gaming keypads like the Nostromo, upgrading to the Tartarus is a worthwhile investment. I’ve used a Nostromo in the past, and the new Tartarus is both more comfortable and more functional. In the end though, I’ve never found a reason to use either for very long; you’re better off with a highly configurable keyboard. Hey, doesn’t Razer sell a few of those?

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Struggling Nintendo announces 2DS handheld, cuts Wii U price

These are desperate times for Nintendo, and so the game-system juggernaut will take a couple of desperate measures to get its hardware into more hands.

The more surprising move is the announcement of a Nintendo 2DS. Priced at $130 and launching on October 12, the handheld system is $40 cheaper than the Nintendo 3DS, and it plays all the same games. But as the name implies, it doesn’t have a 3D screen, nor does it have the clamshell design found on other DS handhelds.

The design of the 2DS is definitely weird—the tapering thickness almost gives it the appearance of a doorstop—but the lack of a hinge should keep kids from snapping the hardware in half, and the lower price makes it a more attractive buy for parents.

Nintendo’s 3DS has fared better than the Wii U, but worldwide 3DS sales declined 25 percent year-over-year last quarter—not good for a system that’s only a couple years old. Nintendo has felt the squeeze from phones and tablets, as more money is now being spent on iOS and Android games than on dedicated gaming handhelds.

In a somewhat predictable move, Nintendo will drop the price of its “Deluxe” Wii U console from $350 to $300, effective September 20. The Deluxe package includes 32GB of storage, a copy of Nintendo Land, a console stand, a GamePad stand and a GamePad charging cradle.

It’s unclear what will become of the $300 “Basic” Wii U model, which only included 8GB of storage and none of the extras listed above. Nintendo may silently kill off this model, given that most retailers stopped selling it months ago. (Nintendo had previously insisted that the Basic model hadn’t been discontinued.)

Wii U

The Wii U price cut certainly looks like a response to upcoming consoles from Sony and Microsoft. Sony’s PlayStation 4will cost $400 when it arrives on November 15, and Microsoft’s Xbox One will cost $500 when it launches in November.

Although exact pre-order numbers aren’t known, Sony says that more than 1 million people havepre-ordered the PS4, and GameStop says pre-orders of both consoles have been “much stronger” than the previous generation. Nintendo, meanwhile, has sold 3.61 million Wii U systems worldwide since its November launch.

While Nintendo has long argued that its own software and hit franchises will help sell the hardware, it never hurts to have lower prices along with it. A cheaper Wii U and DS handheld could help give Nintendo a boost as it heads into a fiercely competitive holiday season.

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Review: Razer's Kraken 7.1 headset delivers great virtual surround sound at a reasonable price

San Francisco’s a fine city, but like any major metropolitan area the most common option for housing is a “cozy” hole in the wall with little room for furniture, much less hefty, neighbor-vexing sound systems.

Enter the gaming headset: a decent pair of cans will offer an appreciable aural improvement in merry-making, whether you’re taking potshots at zombies or enjoying your new Britney Spears record. Razer’s latest is the Kraken 7.1, a gorgeous piece of equipment bedecked in the peripheral maker’s trademark black and green-LED motif. A mere $99 gets you two ear pieces (one for each ear), a mic, and a lengthy USB cable to plug it into your PC or Mac.

The Kraken 7.1 is comfortable, if a little gaudy.

I kid. Like any good technology arms race, the modern headset needs to do a bit more than serve up sound to command lofty prices. The Kraken has chosen to prey on my one weakness—virtual 7.1 surround sound, a game changer (in the right games) that would otherwise require setting up more studio monitors and audio cable than my humble abode has square footage for.

Last spring I lent an ear to Razer’s Tiamat 7.1 gaming headset, and enjoyed it immensely. It’s expensive ($200) and requires a 5.1 or (ideally) 7.1 surround-sound capable sound card or motherboard to be a worthwhile purchase. When you have all that, you’ll still spend a bit of time twiddling knobs to get the audio just right. But once that’s all set, the ten drivers built into the Tiamat’s ear pieces serve up a luscious surround-soundscape that’s just about worth the price of entry, if you’re picky about something as nebulous as sense of space and aural immersion in games.

The virtual surround sound emulated by the Kraken 7.1 makes a huge difference in games that support it.

Now cut the Tiamat's price tag in half, eliminate much of the fiddling, and you’ve got a solid idea of what to expect from the Kraken 7.1. The headset employs Razer’s 7.1 virtual surround sound tech; PCWorld’s Alex Wawro checked out the standalone version of Razer Surround earlier this summer, and approved. It’s actually rather neat, though you’ll need to install Razer’s Synapse 2.0 software to tweak any settings—par for the course with most of Razer’s new wares. Synapse will let you calibrate the surround sound, a simple process that involves looking at a circular diagram that shows where sound is supposed to originate from, then shutting your eyes and tapping your arrow keys or scrolling your mouse wheel until the audio clip “lands” in the right place.

Now, you can’t simply plug in 7.1 surround sound gear and expect a world of difference. While every modern game is technically capable of spitting out environmental audio that’s cognizant of your position, you’ll get the best results from titles that are optimized with this sort of technology in mind. I’ve found that first-person shooters tend to take far more care with crafting 7.1-friendly experiences; fire up titles like Metro: Last Light, Dead Space 3 or Battlefield 3 for best results.

7.1 surround sound makes a big difference in the way you play atmospheric first-person shooters like Metro: Last Light.

These games do a heck of a job employing aural tricks to plant you in a particular place and inundating you with audio cues that tip you off to the baddies lurking around you. It's especially valuable during firefight—battles bolstered by 7.1 surround sound audio are an event unto themselves. Better players than me will take advantage of being able to hear those telltale footsteps, but even occasionally knowing a backstab is coming a second or two before I’m dead is its own little reward.

Little of this would matter if the headset sounded terrible. Thankfully, this headset does not sound terrible! The Kraken 7.1 delivers clear, rich audio in both games and music without missing a beat. Need more bass? A bass boost setting lets you tweak lower frequencies. Want to tweak your mic? A few sliders let you adjust your voice input settings and adjust the ambient noise reduction sensitivity. Tired of buzzwords and want to get down to brass tacks? Dive into the equalizer and fiddle to your hearts content. Everything sounds great, and you can make it sound greater still by mucking around in Synapse.

The tiny LED at the tip of the boom mic shuts off so you know it's been muted.

Voice input comes care of a digital boom microphone tucks neatly into the left ear cup, and sounds great. The mic sits on a flexible arm so you can adjust it to your heart’s content, and a tiny mute button sits on the end so you can chew that sandwich without disturbing your squadmates; pressing the button shuts off the LED at the tip of the mic, a brilliantly simple way of letting you know when you’re transmitting or not. The headset is also incredibly comfortable: the big, comfy ear cups wrap tightly around around my head, and while they won’t block out the outside world they will give you a cloistered audio experience—you’ll want to turn the volume down.

The Kraken 7.1 isn’t perfect. I always complain about wires, and this is a wired headset. But there’s a slight difference here. Many newer headsets bundle some sort of volume control gadget—the Plantronics Rig and Razer Tiamat both come equipped with a volume puck or brick that the headset plugs into. This leaves you with quite a bit of slack as you’ll only need to negotiate the distance between headset and puck, which will be within arms reach. The Kraken 7.1 needs to be plugged directly into your PC, which can be a hassle. In my case, that’s behind some monitors, around the back of my fairly large desk, and into the rear of my PC. If you’re gaming on a laptop, you’ll be fine. In my case I still had a fair amount of slack, but less than I’d like.

On a related note: mayhaps I’m spoiled, but it’s been years since I’ve used a headset that didn’t feature some kind of on-the-fly volume control, something the Kraken 7.1 is sorely lacking. The audio shortcut keys on my keyboard work in a pinch, but we don’t all have keyboards with loads of extra buttons on them.

I also ran into two technical issues. One was my own fault: my teammates complained that my voice sounded buzzy, as if I were transmitting from inside a hornet nest. I took a quick trip to the rear of my computer, switched USB ports and the problem was solved. The second issue was a bit odder—my review unit’s right earpiece is decidedly louder than the left. A quick trip to Windows’ volume mixer fixed the balance issue, but I’m still troubleshooting what the cause could be and lamenting that Razer’s Synapse serves up all sorts of bells and whistles, but doesn’t offer a simple Left-to-Right audio balance toggle.

So what are you paying for exactly? Truth be told, the Kraken 7.1 feels a lot like the original Kraken Pro ($80) with Razer’s surround sound technology baked into its configurator. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing—Razer Surround will start to cost $20 next year, so the Kraken 7.1 is essentially taking an updated version of existing hardware and bundling the software into the price.

Is the Kraken 7.1 worth $100? Sure. But if you already own a pair of stereo headsets you’re in love with, grab Razer’s Surround software instead. If you loathe wires, I’ve been rather smitten by the Creative Sound Blaster Tactic3D Rage ($90) for some time now, though it admittedly isn’t as comfortable. And if you’ve got even more cash to spend—as well as a sound card—get the Razer Tiamat, which is awesome. But if you’re right in the middle—demanding comfort, don’t mind wires, and want a solid 7.1 surround sound experience without spend beaucoup bucks—the Kraken 7.1 headset is an excellent choice.

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