Need a recommendation for a surround sound headset

[prophetik music]

i'm looking to upgrade from my current 2.0 headphones (which i love) to a set of surround sound headphones. i've had the x12s for about four years, so i'm out of touch with the market on gaming headsets. i'd love some suggestions.

what do i need to look for? is there a difference between 5.1 and 7.1? i've heard that 5.1 is actually unique drivers whereas the 7.1 version is simulated. is that the case? any suggestions on comfort of fit? i'm not overly concerned about the price as long as it isn't bananas - i use them every night so i care more about comfort and consistency than everything.

if they work with an XB1, that'd be awesome.

[prophetik music]

no one uses these?

[OceansAndrew]

i have no idea about these kind of headphones. 

 

i'm helping.

[BardicKnowledge]

I just use nice stereo cans (the ultra-comfy AKG-K240s here) and let drivers / software do all the rest of the work.  I can diifferentiate between "in front" and "behind" readily enough with them if the game is mixed properly.

[MaxFrost]

Keep using your comfy awesome 2.0s. I have the logitech g930 and pair of Sennheiser HD 600s. Guess which ones get used more? 

Honestly, what mostly breaks the point of 3d sound is that they're having to do stuff like 5.1 emulation. You have direct sound input to each ear developers, why are you emulating speaker setups when you could raycast the sound source and DO IT ON THE FLY.

We have two ears. Surround emulation can be done with just two speakers. Hell, my "surround" headphones do exactly that, one tweeter/woofer pair in each ear. Flipping the switch just turns on the emulation.

[prophetik music]

good to know. i guess i'll be sticking with my current headphones (which seriously make me look like a 14yo kid who likes those dorito taco bell things and CoD).

[Nabeel Ansari]

Quote

Keep using your comfy awesome 2.0s. I have the logitech g930 and pair of Sennheiser HD 600s. Guess which ones get used more? 

Honestly, what mostly breaks the point of 3d sound is that they're having to do stuff like 5.1 emulation. You have direct sound input to each ear developers, why are you emulating speaker setups when you could raycast the sound source and DO IT ON THE FLY.

We have two ears. Surround emulation can be done with just two speakers. Hell, my "surround" headphones do exactly that, one tweeter/woofer pair in each ear. Flipping the switch just turns on the emulation.

 

The issue with emulating direct ear is that it's usually done via HRTF, and the HRTF is good enough to appeal on a general use-case basis, but isn't nearly as good as actual surround.

I'm not going to get into the insane details as to why, but basically it's because everyone has a different shaped head/ear geometry. When using HRTF's, it's done using IR of a recorded stereo pair with some average dummy head geometry. It doesn't actually work for everyone, though; two people hearing the same IR convolved HRTF sound won't hear the same effect. Because their head geometries are different, the phase differences that would occur to one person hearing sound are not the same as the ones of another person. To one person, it's fully immersive 3D, to the other, it's kinda skirting a bit around their head and sounding comb-filtered.

Which brings up another point; 3D emulation kills sound quality, since it's intentionally damaged sound (phase filtered) to try and appeal to your ears instead of having pure sounds come from the actual locations and letting nature do the work for you.

Cue the ensuing joy when you're developing a 3D DSP module for a project and the 3D effect doesn't work on your boss. 

P.S. I kind of interchangeably mixed up "3D emulation" and "surround emulation", they're both not great, and surround emulation is actually worse.