Update: The full review is now available

A little while back I received an Intensor LX IGS 350 for review. Things have been keeping me hopping around here so I have not had a chance to start on a full review yet.

What’s an Intensor LX? Its a gaming chair like no other developed by Imeron Technology (http://www.imeron.com) (formerly BSG Labs) Its not simply a comfortable chair for sitting in, in fact while it is comfortable, there are many more comfortable chairs to just sit in. No…the Intersor LX is a tactile feedback device that uses a patented audio system that includes a specially designed amplifier, five built-in-speakers - a full range driver between your legs, left and right midrange drivers on either side of your legs, a subwoofer behind your back and a tweeter behind your head. The subwoofer behind your back is what powers the tactile effects cued by sounds with lots of bass. All of this sits on a five-caster base with hydraulic height adjustment and a tilt adjustment.

The 80 watt amplifier plugs into your sound card either replacing your regular speaker or supplementing by using a Y-cable or by setting your four speaker sound card to two speaker mode and plugging a 2 speaker system into one jack and the Intensor cable into the other. The amplifier then connects to the chair via another cable. The chair itself has a headphone jack as well as a volume control and tactile level control.

I agreed to review the Intensor LX with some trepidation as we focus on 3D sound, but I was assured that with the new headphone jack on the chair 3d gaming in headphone mode would be a blast and I was definitely not disappointed! In headphone mode all of the speakers other than the subwoofer driving the tactile response are muted. The result is you really feel the explosions as the subwoofer is aimed right at your back and the headphones handle the 3D audio and work just as well in this respect as using them without the chair. You really get the best of both worlds. Headphone audio as good as your particular sound card and headphones produce and body shaking tactile feedback from the Intensor LX 350.

When using the chair with out the headphones, it can really pump out the volume, maxing out at around 108db according to the specs. However, while a console gamer might consider the sound adequate as their sole sound system, it does not compare favorably to a decent multimedia speaker system and even less so to an excellent system like the Cambridge Soundworks FPS2000. As such, I would recommend that no one spend the money to use them as their only speaker system on a PC. Having said that, Imeron does offer an optional 40 watt supplemental subwoofer (which I don’t have) which may help in that regard.

So what about using it with a with a three piece speaker system? You can do this by using a dual stereo headphone adapter and have one output go to your multimedia speakers and the other go to the chair amplifier. In this mode you get great tactile effects and stereo games also work well with the multimedia speakers supplementing and enhancing separation and tonal quality but the 3D audio does not work in this mode as the HRTFs get muddled (great technical term ;) ) by the chair’s own output. A way around this would be to plug in headphones or a dummy headphone jack to mute the speakers and use the chair with your main speakers just as a tactile device. I will test and report on this in our full review on the chair.

I also tried the Intensor LX in 4 speaker mode using the Sound Blaster Live so that I could hook the FSP2000s to the DIN connector and have the Intensor LX connected to one of the Live’s analog outputs (front in this example). With the FPS2000’s turned up loud enough they do a great job of positioning, but up down effects are lost in the bedlam. As far as the chair goes though, this setup does not work well, as you are only sending sound from the front left and right channels to the Intensor LX. This results in mismatched effect, as the chair is silent if sound is not coming from the rear channel where as explosions in the front shake and shudder. Note that Imeron do not recommend this four speaker configuration, it was just something I had to try.

Overall, the chair is very attractive and sturdy although the volume control and tactile feedback sliders are a little on the flimsy side. The back of the chair folds down when not in use.