Crystal Clear Audio for your PC
Benefits of Digitally Enhanced Headsets
Audio is a major component of most of the hottest PC applications today. No matter what applications you use on your computer – Internet telephony, chat, MP3 music files, games or movies – you'll want top audio quality.
True digitally enhanced audio can significantly improve your listening experience. Digitally enhanced headsets provide three main benefits over conventional analog headsets.
- The digital interface provides an inherently better signal.
- Once audio data is in digital, rather than analog form, it can be easily modified and customized.
- Installing and configuring a digital headset can be a great deal easier than an analog one.
Your analog headset is only as good as the sound card you plug it into. Sound cards in a PC are usually located near noisy components such as CDs, high frequency CPUs, graphic cards, memory chips and hard drives, and are therefore subject to high electromagnetic interference. The problem is even more pronounced in small form-factor machines, like portables, where electronic components are even closer together. In these cases, bypassing the traditional analog sound card inputs becomes even more important.
The Power of USB
That's where USB or Universal Serial Bus, comes in. USB is a high-speed digital connection directly into your PC. The USB connector is now ubiquitous, and has been included on virtually every PC sold over the past several years. Connecting a headset via a PC's USB port allows you to bypass the sound card entirely, resulting in a cleaner and stronger signal. As a result, you get optimal audio fidelity for the headset.
When the USB port is used for sound, the sound must be transmitted through the port in the form of digital data. This digital audio stream can be modified and enhanced directly from the PC. Plantronics® digitally enhanced headsets really stand out because they have in-line modules that utilize three separate chipsets to provide the best audio with our speakers and microphones.
The Clarity of DSP
The use of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) is what makes Plantronics computer headsets truly enhanced and unique. DSP and circuitry in the in-line control can enhance and customize the signal in a number of ways. For example, in the case of a speech recognition application, DSP can be used to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (also known as signal level compensation) of incoming speech, resulting in greater recognition accuracy. In fact, Plantronics has performed tests proving that a USB-based, digitally modified signal significantly improves accuracy in speech recognition applications, particularly in environments with a lot of ambient noise.
In much the same way that a stereo equalizer can be adjusted to optimize audio quality for a particular type of music or sound (e.g. movies), DSP can also apply appropriate filters to the audio stream depending on the type of application is being used. Whether you're using speech recognition, playing an MP3 or a CD, chatting over the Internet, watching a movie, or playing an action game, you'll always have the audio parameters set appropriately for optimal performance.
Full Audio Control
Using the PC Audio Control Center software, which is exclusive to Plantronics headsets, you can adjust numerous audio settings and apply various effects. Our digital headsets also provide in-line, push-button volume level and mute controls. Volume settings are also saved within the headset's memory.
Now, more than ever, PC users can benefit from the use of digital sound for a variety of applications. Plantronics has stayed on the cutting edge to provide the latest innovations in digitally enhanced headsets.
