So far really liking my Schiit Hel 2, only tested the headphone out (PC38x, Audioquest nightowl, Sivga SV006). Tested it for about 3 hours of music and 2 hours of gaming (warzone) yesterday.
Some observations:
- Sound is very smooth yet refined.
- Volume pot is very nice.
- The switches feel very nice too, very analogue if that makes sense.
- In general it looks really good, I personally am a stickler for red and black. The red is pretty subtle though.
- Nice packaging, everything was sealed. Nice USB-C cables.
- Included 1/4 to 3.5 mm adapter is absolutely horrible, it looks very cheap and it was crooked too, its a joke. Weird schiit they went this way honestly, but whatever. Didn't sound bad or anything. The trrs to seperate mic/headphone cable looks so much better.
- Works perfectly fine with laptop via USB hub (inside monitor).
- Works perfectly fine with PS5, my friends didn't notice anything different in how my mic sounded (which is fine, it was pretty good with mixamp).
- Channel imbalance travel on volume is pretty short. 8 o clock and it is already gone. Haven't noticed any issues, because all headphones wanted more volume than that. (haven't tested IEMs, can try if someone would like to)
- 10 o clock is the most I have used so far, on low gain, on PC38x / nightowl / Sivga SV006
- Sound while gaming was very crisp. No chat audio mix knob is a small drawback to mixamp, but I think that would be impossible with only 1 input (USB). The PS5 chat/game audio mix slider is not hard to reach and is sufficient imho.
- Surprised how well Schiit/FedEx handled shipping to EU, heard a lot of horror stories about FedEx but it was here in 6 days, with a completely intact box (FedEx International Priority)
Some small quirks:
Comparison to Soundblaster G6 (bought B-stock when Hel was delayed):
- Sound of the hell seemed a little bit more relaxed and refined. But after trying to A/B a few songs for an hour, I am honestly not sure if there is a difference. There might be, but it is small.
- G6 volume knob is horrible if you have sensitive headphones (I was at windows volume 2 sometimes...). Constant fear of blowing up my headphones/ears if I accidentally would put it at full volume. Also really hard to make the volume exactly what you want, since the only playroom was between 2 and 12 or so. I am old-school, I like to keep my windows volume at 100 and do volume control in the analogue domain (even though I don't think that matters anymore nowadays)
- Hell looks 10x as good, dare I say sexy.
- Hell has more power for sure, but I personally don't need it.
- The Hell was 3 times as expensive as the G6, but still decided to keep it and return the G6, I guess looks and usability are more important than I thought!
- Overal the G6 is an insane value buy on B-Stock (it is on B-stock right now in EU store).
If anyone has anything specific to test etc please let me know
Nice write-up
I'll echo most of your observations. I only run mine from PC via USB. I've used it direct to the PC (2020 AW M15 R3), and currently through a powered hub, with no discernible difference between the two .
I used it for about five hours last night in WZ, and here's my take so far.
- Windows recognizes this thing right away.
- Volume between 10:00 and 11:30 at high gain with volume on PC38X set at about 2/3. Windows volume at 100%. The thing has plenty of power. Someday when I'm bored I'll hook up my LCD-2Cs.
- Mic gain at about 11:30 with level in Windows set at 50%. Friends said it sounded "fine", but I didn't press them for details. Nobody complained, which is ultimately what matters. When I tested with mic-test.com I noticed I sounded much better compared to the headset jack on my PC. Fuller, cleaner (I'm bad at describing sound). This goes for Discord and in-game chat.
- In-game WZ sounded the best it ever has for me. Not that WZ sounds that good to begin with IMO.
- Positional cues via Dolby Atmos were very good. I do need to tweak my eq to accentuate footsteps a bit more to my liking, but running my settings used for the headset jack were pretty close.
- I enjoyed the big smooth volume control. Much better than a control on the headset.
- Mine shipped on a Wednesday and arrived on the following Monday in good condition from Schiit to Michigan.
- My 1/8 to 1/4 adapter was in fine shape, but not the nicest one I've ever seen. I'm using the included TRRS adapter and it works fine.
- The thing runs cool. Not like my Jot 2.
Negatives and quirks:
- USB ports are loose ... looking for a solution.
- Mic gain knob was "uneven" when new and hard to turn in spots. That's loosening up nicely though.
- Running Atmos, I'm limited to 24/48KHz which is ok. If I try to set it higher, Atmos is disabled. If I set it lower, latency is introduced. It's hard to quantify, but I'm guessing at least 250 ms. Unacceptable for a FPS. For a hot minute I was about ready to pack this up and send it back, but I figured it out.
In less than an hour last night, I sorta forgot about the thing. The sound was good, I was able to dial everything in, and nobody said "huh ... what the hell did you just say?". It disappeared and I was able to focus on getting wrecked in WZ. Which is a good thing. Overall, I'd say it's definitely worth the asking price.