I've a pair of
Turtle Beach X11s that have since been discontinued and replaced with the similar
X12. Had them for 3 years now.
For $60, they're fairly good in terms of sound quality with a microphone that sounds much better than the official 360 headset. There isn't a huge emphasis on bass like I noticed when using a Tritton headset of similar pricing, though I will say the Tritton headset had better build quality. I've had to go at my headset with superglue once or twice because of the weak plastic joint connecting the right cup to the rest of headset. If you want surround sound you'll have to go for something a little more expensive.
As for connecting them, you can connect them directly to the Xbox or the TV. They use the red/white(RCA connector) audio outputs. If you're using a HDMI cable and your TV has RCA output, you're all set. However, not all TVs have this in which case you'll need to use
the 360 composite cable(or the official audio adapter, but I'll explain why you shouldn't buy that) along with your HDMI cable. But there's a problem with that too: The Xbox designers, intentionally or not, made it impossible to insert the 360 composite cable into the Xbox with the HDMI cable inserted at the same time.
As you can see, the composite cable port(A/V) is very close to the HDMI port. The two cables simply won't fit at the same time. There are two ways around this:
-
Removing the unnecessarily large plastic cover from the old 360 composite cable, which you probably have lying around somewhere.
-Buying some gimmick, packaged as "Xbox 360 official HDMI audio adapter", for about $30.
The headset is USB powered. Simply connect it to the Xbox or some other nearby USB port to power it.
