Are Surround Gaming Headphones BS? #Helpful Post

what the crap are they not here we go

okay this should be fine so I'm gonna go

through this door backwards wait shoot

it's behind me before where come on I

mean like I can tell he's like behind me

but I can't tell exactly where he is it

sucks oh what's this

surround sound in a head sack heck yeah

I can get into that hold on a minute you

still only got two speakers I mean is it

even any good

it's like surely you'd need Oh so this

is is full true 7.1 surround sound in a

headset look at look at all this there's

so many drivers in here what is the best

way to get surround sound out of a

headset there's only one way to find out

by comparing them all

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surround sound is nothing new I mean

we've had quadrophonic records since the

70s and I mean there's nothing special

right just add more speakers and boom

the sound is all around you'd easy

haha except not really unless the audio

was recorded binaural e with dual

microphones positioned like human ears

they're special processing required in

the studio to convert the mono audio

that's typically recorded in sound

booths and movie sets or in YouTube

videos into stereo or surround and

traditionally this conversion has been a

highly manual and artistic process that

locks down the number of audio channels

that are available but current-gen

surround sound technologies like Dolby

Atmos and DTS X get around this channel

hard lock limitation by actually

processing where a sound should be in 3d

space at the studio allowing your

receiver to take this information and

then approximate that location as best

it can using whatever speakers it has

available this technology is called

object based surround and I'm bringing

it up because it just so happens to be

very similar to how many games have

processed their audio for years so what

nearly all of our surround sound

headsets are doing is taking our game

audio or at minimum a surround audio

stream with this positional data and

using what's called a head related

transfer function or HRT F for short to

process it in such a way as to mimic the

way that your ears perceive the

directionality of sound which is super

complicated by the way and has to do

with like the curvatures of the growths

on the side of your head and like all

that kind of stuff

that's not the only way to do it though

that's right this here is the brute

force method so this headset has five

drivers

her ear to actually provide the front

rear side Center and subwoofer channels

that you'd expect in a straight surround

sound system firing directly into your

ear balls now the question here is which

one of these solutions is better a chart

CF based surround makes a lot of sense

that is as long as your head is roughly

the same size as the head that it was

coated for and meanwhile true 7.1

methods like razors TM at 7.1 are

potentially agnostic to the shape of

your head but all those extra speakers

limit the maximum size of the individual

drivers and they add weight and

complexity to our setup besides we don't

know yet if either these methods

actually work so without further ado

then it's time for some science in order

to test these headsets we're going to

use overwatch thanks to its excellent

surround mix the setup is simple load up

the shooting range

then grab soldier 76 and sprint over

next to these BOTS that you periodically

once here will blindfold our participant

spin the viewport around choose a

headset at random and then have the test

subject point out where they think the

shooting is coming from once that's done

we'll have them take the mouse and

blindly aim at the bots since we only

care about the horizontal accuracy I'll

adjust the vertical axis so we can

measure how far away they are from

hitting the bots and rinse and repeat

then it's on to the next victim

so after tallying the results it seemed

relatively random whether or not most of

the participants picked the right

direction when it came time said to

actually aim but there are at least a

few takeaways here starting with that

dolby atmos for headphones which is a

software solution ended up with more

direct hits than any other combination

while the razer man-of-war came in

second also the clear loser here is the

razer TM at 7.1 we're more often than

not the target was actually completely

off screen

nothing to the true seven-point-one

thing after all now when it comes to

pointing out the source of a sound

though the best results came from the

logitech g930 3 and the asus rog Strix

fusion 700 with an average variation of

only 6% across all of our tests which is

less than half of the overall average

our control stereo headset sat at just

under 12% with every other contender

except for Dolby Atmos for headphones

ending up being actually worse poor

razer

interestingly even with our admittedly

small sample size it quickly became

clear that the people who were more

accustomed to headphone gaming tended to

be the best at zeroing in on where they

thought a sound was coming from which

makes sense given the sweeping pattern

they employ while ironically enough

everybody else seemed to have better

results when pointing out the initial

direction perhaps as a result of the

gamers being very accustomed to their

own setups it's hard to say for certain

for now though let's get back to the

question at hand

our surround gaming headphones BS

according to our testing the answer is

mostly with the exception of Asus

proprietary solution the most successful

things we tried were all either Dolby or

DTS based so done in software which

tells me that there really is no such

thing as a good surround gaming headset

I mean Asus comes with ROG motherboards

and you can even buy Dolby Atmos for

headphones on the Windows Store with a

DTS option coming soon and those can be

applied to any stereo headphones which

means that the real answer is something

that many of you probably already knew

if you want the best gaming audio then

you just get good audio there's no such

thing as gaming headphones just good

headphones paired with the processing

solution that works best for you and the

good news about that is that these

software solutions actually tend to have

free trials or in Razors case are even

actually free outright so then with

audio being such a subjective experience

it's on you guys to try it out with your

own headphone

and your own ears and find your sweet

spot could listening inspire you to

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