Closer Examination

The headphones themselves look like all the other 5.1 surround sound headphones from Zalman. The only major difference between this version and the others is the USB sound card. It's evident that Zalman has opted for an easy transportable version of the USB sound card which I think is a shame. I would have liked to see that you could use this headset without the USB sound card as well. This would of course mean that the sound card would have had to be a bit bigger in order to accommodate three mini-jack connectors, or another type of connector.


In order to be able to use this pair of headphones and its surround capabilities you need a free USB port on your PC. I think that it has to be on your PC and not on a hub because of the larger than average power draw from the sound card.


The headband is heavily padded and makes the headset quite comfortable to wear, however, even with the big headband you can still feel the ear cup's pressure. This is because the headphones weigh a lot compared to its Sennheiser or Technics rivals.


Zalman has put a lot of thought into the design of the ear pads. You can actually replace the ear pads if they break or get worn down. The operation is pretty simple, you just pull one side of the ear pad over the edge and the rest peels off quite easily. Installing them is a bit harder, you have to fiddle around with the rubber band in order to get the ear pad to fit correctly.


The Zalman ZM-RS6F USB look unlike anything I have ever seen. The slightly elongated oval ear cups have strange looking size adjusters on either side. One thing is for sure the design is original and functional, however, these headphones suffer from the same problem as the recently reviewed Zalman ZM-DS4F and that is that they are quite large even with the size adjusters set to minimum.


When you expand both size adjusters this headset can accommodate even the biggest head (fits my head at about 1/5 expanded size adjusters).


The design of the headband allows for this headset to be folded for easy transportation.


On the pictures above you can see the internal construction with three tweeters and one woofer in each ear cup. The small bumps on the inside of the cups probably aid the surround experience while using the headphones. The internal construction of a headphone is one of the areas that are difficult to explain fully due to the fact that acoustics are rather unpredictable based just on the looks. Compared to some of the best Sennheiser headphones I have had this design is rather strange.


The cord on this headset only attaches to the left ear cup. In order to protect the cord from bending, Zalman uses a small rubber grommet which should prevent bending so much that the wire inside gets broken.