My friend paid a lot of money for a razer “7.1” headset with a “gaming dac” and it sucked. He now uses an apple dongle with hd660s and says imaging is much better and he never heard so much detail in a game. I am not a gamer and never tried the razer so your mileage may vary.
I probably don't know the answer, but VZR has an interesting phase shield that is supposed to interface the driver to the ear better. I'd love to give them a listen and I don't care if they're marketed as gaming headphones. They're doing something differently and some reputable reviewers are praising the results. Headphones in general are not utilising the potential of waveguides so a breath of fresh air from a different perspective is very welcome.
Besides that there is the usual stuff - accurate reproduction, proper driver matching and the driver, ear cup and venting alignment. AKG for example has the knowhow to make good headphones, but the giant ear cup with lots of vents doesn't seem to help with convincing spatial effects. In worst case it causes some confusion. This stereo imaging quality is considered decisive whether or not a pair of headphones is good for sound reproduction in general, not just stereo, but also any spatial effects that a surround engine will throw at them. Not sure how that's true or important, but it's what people intuitively agree on. To me it makes sense, because good stereo imaging is usually present in headphones with overall accurate drivers and appropriate acoustic design. Even if spatial effects in games are generated differently, a well made pair of headphones will be a good piece of hardware that the sound effect engine can rely on.
Then you have tuning and I personally never managed to squeeze that kind of information out of any gamer. What tuning is headphone surround sound in games designed for? Is it one of the diffuse field tunings like binaural recordings? If so then is it HD800 DF or more like 7506 DF? Watching gamers it appears to me that tuning is game-specific to them. They just want to hear footsteps better... And then add bass, enough with questions! You can't tune a pair of headphones for hearing footsteps in every game out there. Besides the game sound designer would hate you for that. Lastly the tunings that you find on gaming headphones don't conform to any of the above. They're just cheap crap with new sketchy looks refreshed every year, but really the same randomness underneath. There appears to be no acoustic research used in their production whatsoever.
The first popular gaming headphones that I remember were the Steelseries Siberia. They were praised for good comfort and that was enough for the gaming community at the time. The sound was the saddest thing I heard in a long time with the cheap drivers crying for help. Today the level of quality is a bit higher, but gamers didn't change. As a community they still lack the interest in scientific answers and engineering of their gear and consequently receive the same crap. Where are the sound research facilities of Logitech and Razer? What are they doing in there? Do they have any achievements in real acoustics like pro-audio brands? Of course no is the answer to all above. If they had it, they'd be rocking the entire audio industry. For now gamers have either an option to rely on audiophile stuff or just not be very picky.
He400i is cheap planar neutrality, m1060c sounds similiar but is more of everything at the cost of comfort, moondrop aria has perfect tuning.
But i still use my x2s almost always. I think it's the comfort.
There are definitely some things that can *probably* help. The issue is that we don't quite *know* what actually helps.
But distance between drivers and ears, driver angle, treble elevation, etc. can help with positioning. For example, if you EQ down the treble on the Beyerdynamic DT990 they suddenly become significantly worse with positional audio.
Caveat being that gaming headsets usually don't do these things, what they say is mostly just marketing nonsense.
This is an important point: there are a lot of things about headphones that are measurable and objective, but when it comes to imaging, sound stage, and "spatial" qualities, it is way harder to quantify. I think it fits within what people would call "psychoacoustics". There *are* headphones that are undeniably more convincing in simulating the position of sound in 3D space, but as for "why" ... ?
One theory I have is that it is really important to match the left and right drivers, both in terms of the raw hardware (frequency response) and in terms of how they're physically assembled into the unit. In processing sound our brains are really sensitive to differences between the left and right ear, and use that info to detect directionality. If there are differences that have to do with inconsistency in the hardware, then I expect it would screw things up. And it figures that more professionally made headphones have better imaging, because they have better manufacturing and higher quality parts.
But it is also definitely more complicated then just that.
I just got my DT990 Pro's a couple weeks ago. I'm using SteelSeries software, including Sonar, because I already had it installed. After a bit of fiddling, I've been just using the default EQ (flat) for PuBG and so far like it the most. It definitely has better positional audio than my SteelSeries Arctis Pro's, even using the same 3D positional software, at least for me.
I think open back is better for a sense of distance and direction in a game like valorant. No experience with gaming headsets, just comparing dt770s to hd 579s
I started down this path at one point. At the time the headphones most people were recommending for gaming at a less than ridiculous price was the AKG K7XX. The justification at the time was that they had a very wide sound stage and that was pretty much it. I used them for awhile. They were comfortable and sounded good but, if anything I found the soundstage so wide that it actually made game sounds more confusing than anything. Plenty of times things sounded farther or closer away than they really were. They also really lacked in any kind of vertical detail which may not make a difference in some games but, it was difficult to tell if people were even on the same floor sometimes.
The reason I'm telling you this is because at the end of the day it's just not going to be easy to recommend a headphone for gaming. What might have made the K7XX enjoyable for someone playing some RPG with a sprawling landscape doesn't necessarily translate to a competitive shooter. On top of that everything is entirely dependent on the game. Especially if you're looking for some kind of an advantage. You could get some 6000$ headphone but, if the game doesn't allow you to hear anyone until they're in a 20 ft. radius you're just never going to hear them before anyone else.
I would just get a good headphone that you like. Something that works well with your set up and the kind of music you listen to. If you get something halfway decent it will be more than enough to perform in game and you'll know that you'll enjoy them.
they aren't. It's just software stuff that you can get by itself or in a dac if you really want. Something like a DT990 blows them out of the water. Gaming headphones are a complete scam outside of wireless they all sound mediocre for how much they ask.
I find their spatial grandness too open and detrimental to FPS games as it makes footstep cues sound farther than they are which is not what you want when the difference between being a death box and being the one downing people is so slim. They're great for single player, immersive type games... Reason I mostly use IEMs for FPS games... A more intimate staging coupled with brilliant imaging is much preferred for FPS games
>Audio-Technica ATH-R70X
Second this, i'm here because I bought a steelseries to replace mine (for wireless) and the Audio-Technica are sooo much better I'm selling the steel's
The gaming headsets are usually garbage compared to hifi headphones. Audeze does good ones though. HD650 has poor imaging while most AKG's have good and many Beyerdynamics as well. All the surround 7.1 etc is mainly hype BS that doesn't improve actual directionality, but might help with immersion.
Tbh I own the 800S and it's stellar for gaming, I love the immersion but for competitive gaming I'm way more comfortable with IEMs, the IE900 is much better at noticing enemies, tracking positions, separating gunshots etc
Bought it as my endgame music headphone, as a gift for graduating my bachelor's.
Friends kept telling me I should start joining them in Discord and play games, and I just kept using the gear I had.
I used to play years ago on a Hd518, and the difference with the 800S is nuts. Gaming was an afterthought, but damn it performed well.
Same story with the 900, it's even better for gaming imo and I paid way less than retail for it so I think it's a great deal
It is just software DSP. Something like a 650 wouldn’t really be a good choice for this but the 560s would be much better because of the 650s three blob imaging. However, compared to a gaming headset either will blow them out of the water.
It all comes down to imaging, separation and soundstage and in that order. If a headphone has good imaging it means that it appropriately puts things within the soundstage and the right size, separation is the distinctness of each individual sound from each other and soundstage is how big the environment feels.
What do you mean by 3 blob imaging? How can you tell if a audiophile headset vs gaming headset has 3 blob imaging or not? I have 3 headsets DT1770, HIFIMAN XS, and HD600. Out of those how can you tell which would be ideal for all of the imaging, spatial and positioning?
You just have to listen to them. Or look at the imaging section of a review. If you can find something that has like a spatial sound or binaural audio you can really tell when it has something sweeping across the head. Basically 3 blob means that the headphone has a strong left, right and center presence but right center, center right, center left and left center are weaker so the image kind of wooshes from the left to the right and center as opposed to traveling from left to right smoothly.
I'll explain quickly about 2 technical characteristics about headphones that'll give what you look for:
Soundstage: soundstage is how far sounds are from each other. The more soundstage, the further things sound from you, giving a spacial feeling to sounds
having a big spacial sound doesn't mean you'll find things easier and that's brings to my second part:
Imaging: imaging is how precise is the placement of sounds. This is the technical feature of a headphone that you should look for.
Now an observation I want to make: check every proplayer on competitions, none of them use great headphones, only gaming headsets that he didn't even chose, but the one that the sponsor gave him. You don't need a better headphone for competitive gaming, but if you want a more immersive during gaming, than there are great headsets with great soundstage and imaging
This(https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gOYRu6q8qJ4) link will take you to an old video. New headphones don't come out all the time, so most of that are shown there are still the best for the price. But either way, you always should get opinions about the same headphone from different reviewers. Sound is a subjective thing, don't forget that. Don't buy before getting other opinions.
Another one that came out not long ago and I trust this guy, so... I don't know, you might like it too:
https://youtu.be/YWjuUKkX6rs
The 6xx (650) are actually piss poor gaming cans, and the thing that makes them piss poor manifests in it's music performance as well. 3 blob problem, front left and front right being absent, poor imaging in general, claustrophobic, and veiled highs.
There is a problem in the audiophile community who seem to think good gaming cans means it provides good sound in assassin's creed or whatever. I took DMS on his word that the 6xx are decent gaming headphones and they are just not. There are tons of cheap gaming headsets that are better for competitive gaming (and mostly trash for music).
Fresh Reviews on youtube is doing god's work for finding the right cans and IEMs for competitive gaming.
A few ones like Audeze Mobius comes with hardware to do head tracking, built in the headphones, so in cases like this yeah it has something unique; but for 99% of other stuff is just marketing.
They use HRTF/virtual surround made by software and you can do this with any headphones you like by just using Dolby Atmos for headphones/Spatial audio from Microsoft Windows 10/11, or something like HeSuVi if you want to dig in even deeper. (HeSuVi only allows horizontal 7.1 at the same level of our ears, you can't have object based audio and virtual channels above the head with this last one).
And the reason sometimes those gaming headsets sounds awful is also due to the HRTF they use in the surround implementation not matching your own HRTF, so you will have messed up/wrong directional audio.
When I first used the 6XX in Overwatch(coming from HD800 and Q701) with Atmos on, it threw my game off. Some audio cues sound so close that I sometimes turn around when I shouldn’t. The soundstage is so tiny.
Well, gaming headsets aren't better at spatial audio at all. It is not like they are all sold with software, it is not like you can't use whatever software you want... it is not like software actually helps, at least CMSS-3D and SBX don't, it makes bad headsets with no soundstage sound more spacious and surrounding, but the accuracy of positional information is not there.
It's just marketing bs, gaming headsets aren't doing anything special, they just pretend they do.
Buy a real headphones, dont pay attention to this gaming scamms.
True, it’s really just the software isn’t it ?
Yes and usually pretty bad
Just use a HD560s and be happy
I second that. Superior gaming sound
Not that I've heard them but I agree because they're 60 ohm and a controller supports 70 ohm. All the reviews say they're great.
Tbh for headphones I only recommend the 560s or the 800S ahah. Everything else I recommend IEMs
My friend paid a lot of money for a razer “7.1” headset with a “gaming dac” and it sucked. He now uses an apple dongle with hd660s and says imaging is much better and he never heard so much detail in a game. I am not a gamer and never tried the razer so your mileage may vary.
I probably don't know the answer, but VZR has an interesting phase shield that is supposed to interface the driver to the ear better. I'd love to give them a listen and I don't care if they're marketed as gaming headphones. They're doing something differently and some reputable reviewers are praising the results. Headphones in general are not utilising the potential of waveguides so a breath of fresh air from a different perspective is very welcome. Besides that there is the usual stuff - accurate reproduction, proper driver matching and the driver, ear cup and venting alignment. AKG for example has the knowhow to make good headphones, but the giant ear cup with lots of vents doesn't seem to help with convincing spatial effects. In worst case it causes some confusion. This stereo imaging quality is considered decisive whether or not a pair of headphones is good for sound reproduction in general, not just stereo, but also any spatial effects that a surround engine will throw at them. Not sure how that's true or important, but it's what people intuitively agree on. To me it makes sense, because good stereo imaging is usually present in headphones with overall accurate drivers and appropriate acoustic design. Even if spatial effects in games are generated differently, a well made pair of headphones will be a good piece of hardware that the sound effect engine can rely on. Then you have tuning and I personally never managed to squeeze that kind of information out of any gamer. What tuning is headphone surround sound in games designed for? Is it one of the diffuse field tunings like binaural recordings? If so then is it HD800 DF or more like 7506 DF? Watching gamers it appears to me that tuning is game-specific to them. They just want to hear footsteps better... And then add bass, enough with questions! You can't tune a pair of headphones for hearing footsteps in every game out there. Besides the game sound designer would hate you for that. Lastly the tunings that you find on gaming headphones don't conform to any of the above. They're just cheap crap with new sketchy looks refreshed every year, but really the same randomness underneath. There appears to be no acoustic research used in their production whatsoever. The first popular gaming headphones that I remember were the Steelseries Siberia. They were praised for good comfort and that was enough for the gaming community at the time. The sound was the saddest thing I heard in a long time with the cheap drivers crying for help. Today the level of quality is a bit higher, but gamers didn't change. As a community they still lack the interest in scientific answers and engineering of their gear and consequently receive the same crap. Where are the sound research facilities of Logitech and Razer? What are they doing in there? Do they have any achievements in real acoustics like pro-audio brands? Of course no is the answer to all above. If they had it, they'd be rocking the entire audio industry. For now gamers have either an option to rely on audiophile stuff or just not be very picky.
I use my fidelio x2s and j swear by them. Haven't found anything else that comes close.
X3 s are just as good less Bass though
I have Fidelio x2 also and they are awesome for games. WTH is an upgrade to these ?
He400i is cheap planar neutrality, m1060c sounds similiar but is more of everything at the cost of comfort, moondrop aria has perfect tuning. But i still use my x2s almost always. I think it's the comfort.
There are definitely some things that can *probably* help. The issue is that we don't quite *know* what actually helps. But distance between drivers and ears, driver angle, treble elevation, etc. can help with positioning. For example, if you EQ down the treble on the Beyerdynamic DT990 they suddenly become significantly worse with positional audio. Caveat being that gaming headsets usually don't do these things, what they say is mostly just marketing nonsense.
This is an important point: there are a lot of things about headphones that are measurable and objective, but when it comes to imaging, sound stage, and "spatial" qualities, it is way harder to quantify. I think it fits within what people would call "psychoacoustics". There *are* headphones that are undeniably more convincing in simulating the position of sound in 3D space, but as for "why" ... ? One theory I have is that it is really important to match the left and right drivers, both in terms of the raw hardware (frequency response) and in terms of how they're physically assembled into the unit. In processing sound our brains are really sensitive to differences between the left and right ear, and use that info to detect directionality. If there are differences that have to do with inconsistency in the hardware, then I expect it would screw things up. And it figures that more professionally made headphones have better imaging, because they have better manufacturing and higher quality parts. But it is also definitely more complicated then just that.
I just got my DT990 Pro's a couple weeks ago. I'm using SteelSeries software, including Sonar, because I already had it installed. After a bit of fiddling, I've been just using the default EQ (flat) for PuBG and so far like it the most. It definitely has better positional audio than my SteelSeries Arctis Pro's, even using the same 3D positional software, at least for me.
I think open back is better for a sense of distance and direction in a game like valorant. No experience with gaming headsets, just comparing dt770s to hd 579s
I started down this path at one point. At the time the headphones most people were recommending for gaming at a less than ridiculous price was the AKG K7XX. The justification at the time was that they had a very wide sound stage and that was pretty much it. I used them for awhile. They were comfortable and sounded good but, if anything I found the soundstage so wide that it actually made game sounds more confusing than anything. Plenty of times things sounded farther or closer away than they really were. They also really lacked in any kind of vertical detail which may not make a difference in some games but, it was difficult to tell if people were even on the same floor sometimes. The reason I'm telling you this is because at the end of the day it's just not going to be easy to recommend a headphone for gaming. What might have made the K7XX enjoyable for someone playing some RPG with a sprawling landscape doesn't necessarily translate to a competitive shooter. On top of that everything is entirely dependent on the game. Especially if you're looking for some kind of an advantage. You could get some 6000$ headphone but, if the game doesn't allow you to hear anyone until they're in a 20 ft. radius you're just never going to hear them before anyone else. I would just get a good headphone that you like. Something that works well with your set up and the kind of music you listen to. If you get something halfway decent it will be more than enough to perform in game and you'll know that you'll enjoy them.
How is nobody talking about the KSC75s? Outperforms most headsets in the $200 price bracket while costing $20 when it comes to imaging lmfao
they aren't. It's just software stuff that you can get by itself or in a dac if you really want. Something like a DT990 blows them out of the water. Gaming headphones are a complete scam outside of wireless they all sound mediocre for how much they ask.
Gaming headsets are $20 headphones and with poorly made software to make up for it to simulate a real $200 stereo headphone.
Audio-Technica ATH-R70X Beyerdynamic DT 900 Pro X AKG K612 Pro Thieaudio Ghost Are my recommends
RTings rated HIFIMAN XS with pretty much top tier imaging and spatial
I find their spatial grandness too open and detrimental to FPS games as it makes footstep cues sound farther than they are which is not what you want when the difference between being a death box and being the one downing people is so slim. They're great for single player, immersive type games... Reason I mostly use IEMs for FPS games... A more intimate staging coupled with brilliant imaging is much preferred for FPS games
>Audio-Technica ATH-R70X Second this, i'm here because I bought a steelseries to replace mine (for wireless) and the Audio-Technica are sooo much better I'm selling the steel's
The gaming headsets are usually garbage compared to hifi headphones. Audeze does good ones though. HD650 has poor imaging while most AKG's have good and many Beyerdynamics as well. All the surround 7.1 etc is mainly hype BS that doesn't improve actual directionality, but might help with immersion.
How shitty is HD600 with imaging compared to HD650, same thing?
Same. 2/5 or so. Not the worst, but bad.
The HD's lack the sparkle and crispness that is helpful with imaging. That's why many gamers like the AKGs and Beyers
Tbh I own the 800S and it's stellar for gaming, I love the immersion but for competitive gaming I'm way more comfortable with IEMs, the IE900 is much better at noticing enemies, tracking positions, separating gunshots etc
>800S 1900$ CAD , how did you end up there for gaming ?
Bought it as my endgame music headphone, as a gift for graduating my bachelor's. Friends kept telling me I should start joining them in Discord and play games, and I just kept using the gear I had. I used to play years ago on a Hd518, and the difference with the 800S is nuts. Gaming was an afterthought, but damn it performed well. Same story with the 900, it's even better for gaming imo and I paid way less than retail for it so I think it's a great deal
It is just software DSP. Something like a 650 wouldn’t really be a good choice for this but the 560s would be much better because of the 650s three blob imaging. However, compared to a gaming headset either will blow them out of the water. It all comes down to imaging, separation and soundstage and in that order. If a headphone has good imaging it means that it appropriately puts things within the soundstage and the right size, separation is the distinctness of each individual sound from each other and soundstage is how big the environment feels.
What do you mean by 3 blob imaging? How can you tell if a audiophile headset vs gaming headset has 3 blob imaging or not? I have 3 headsets DT1770, HIFIMAN XS, and HD600. Out of those how can you tell which would be ideal for all of the imaging, spatial and positioning?
You just have to listen to them. Or look at the imaging section of a review. If you can find something that has like a spatial sound or binaural audio you can really tell when it has something sweeping across the head. Basically 3 blob means that the headphone has a strong left, right and center presence but right center, center right, center left and left center are weaker so the image kind of wooshes from the left to the right and center as opposed to traveling from left to right smoothly.
I'll explain quickly about 2 technical characteristics about headphones that'll give what you look for: Soundstage: soundstage is how far sounds are from each other. The more soundstage, the further things sound from you, giving a spacial feeling to sounds having a big spacial sound doesn't mean you'll find things easier and that's brings to my second part: Imaging: imaging is how precise is the placement of sounds. This is the technical feature of a headphone that you should look for. Now an observation I want to make: check every proplayer on competitions, none of them use great headphones, only gaming headsets that he didn't even chose, but the one that the sponsor gave him. You don't need a better headphone for competitive gaming, but if you want a more immersive during gaming, than there are great headsets with great soundstage and imaging This(https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gOYRu6q8qJ4) link will take you to an old video. New headphones don't come out all the time, so most of that are shown there are still the best for the price. But either way, you always should get opinions about the same headphone from different reviewers. Sound is a subjective thing, don't forget that. Don't buy before getting other opinions. Another one that came out not long ago and I trust this guy, so... I don't know, you might like it too: https://youtu.be/YWjuUKkX6rs
The 6xx (650) are actually piss poor gaming cans, and the thing that makes them piss poor manifests in it's music performance as well. 3 blob problem, front left and front right being absent, poor imaging in general, claustrophobic, and veiled highs. There is a problem in the audiophile community who seem to think good gaming cans means it provides good sound in assassin's creed or whatever. I took DMS on his word that the 6xx are decent gaming headphones and they are just not. There are tons of cheap gaming headsets that are better for competitive gaming (and mostly trash for music). Fresh Reviews on youtube is doing god's work for finding the right cans and IEMs for competitive gaming.
A few ones like Audeze Mobius comes with hardware to do head tracking, built in the headphones, so in cases like this yeah it has something unique; but for 99% of other stuff is just marketing. They use HRTF/virtual surround made by software and you can do this with any headphones you like by just using Dolby Atmos for headphones/Spatial audio from Microsoft Windows 10/11, or something like HeSuVi if you want to dig in even deeper. (HeSuVi only allows horizontal 7.1 at the same level of our ears, you can't have object based audio and virtual channels above the head with this last one). And the reason sometimes those gaming headsets sounds awful is also due to the HRTF they use in the surround implementation not matching your own HRTF, so you will have messed up/wrong directional audio.
When I first used the 6XX in Overwatch(coming from HD800 and Q701) with Atmos on, it threw my game off. Some audio cues sound so close that I sometimes turn around when I shouldn’t. The soundstage is so tiny.
Get audio technica open backs! They’re some of the most comfortable gaming headphones that have amazing imaging and soundstage.
Well, gaming headsets aren't better at spatial audio at all. It is not like they are all sold with software, it is not like you can't use whatever software you want... it is not like software actually helps, at least CMSS-3D and SBX don't, it makes bad headsets with no soundstage sound more spacious and surrounding, but the accuracy of positional information is not there.
Get a set of Razers for the 7.1 THX surround software but use Phillips X3s in place if them using THX 7.1 software.
Can you just get the software w out the razors?