an actual squirrel

You know, that chip is based on GCN afaik, which is AMD IP. So if they were shrewd business people, they would work with microsoft to create an api for it, and they would work with their board partners to bring sound cards with that architecture to PC, and encourage multiplatform games to support it.

I have very little faith in mainstream youtubers covering this topic well. Maybe after the PS5 launch, because sony seems like they are championing the technology. Usually, what people will do is just try to learn about this stuff through google, and then they come across some self professed audio guru on headfi or some other forum telling people that surround sound is a gimmick and what people actually need are audiophile headphones with a good "soundstage". Even though if you had a basic understanding of audio then you would know the limitations of traditional stereo audio and that there is no reason to expect the natural soundstage of a headphone to correspond to the actual locations of sounds in the game world. One thing that people can do to test these technologies in games against traditional stereo is to have something generating sounds in front of you, then rotate while it is still making sounds. Then have it behind you and rotate in the opposite direction. Record that, strip out the video, and have people try to differentiate the two with just the audio (and no knowledge of what movements are being made). You could host it on youtube and make it a public test.

You want to make sure the speaker placement is reasonable and the room acoustics are good, and that windows is configured for surround sound. But it technically can give you a competitive advantage. For example, with stereo, you don't have the ability to discern front vs back without rotating. So think of a battle royal game where the ring is closing and you are running in a straight line - you will lose an entire dimension of audio information. Think of a class based shooter with a tank class that has to push forward. Think of a sniper that is pre-aiming. In all these cases, using stereo will put you at a disadvantage.

I think people place too much emphasis on headphone choice, as I think they feel it is the only thing they have control over. However, I think you should mainly just look for something with a good frequency response. The inconvenient truth is that good positional audio comes from the processing used to create binaural audio from the game audio, as well as the quality of the game assets. So for example, that COD game support windows 10 spatial sound. If you get a pair of high end sennheiser hd800 headphones, it will still be objectively worse with plain stereo in terms of positional audio than an average headphone using dolby atmos for headphone or windows sonic for headphone or those type of technologies. This is the type of insight not usually found in gaming headphone discussions on internet forums, as they usually just devolve into circlejerks about how great audiophile headphones are.

Dolby atmos is a way to store 3d audio data digitally. It is done in a way so it can scale to a number of different speaker layouts. It is like the text on this website. If you have a higher resolution monitor, then you get sharper text. But you aren't going to get the quality of a 4k display on a 1080p monitor, even if both displays are viewing the same website. Similarly, you don't get the spatial quality of a 7.1.2 system with just two speakers natively, even if both are playing the same atmos audio. The speakers may have some processing that allows them to give more spatial information, but that is separate from what dolby atmos is.

You can make it work, but it involves extra steps. So, I would maybe go with something that is just a headphone amp, like the upcoming topping L30.

I would suggest looking into using hesuvi. Don't get a dac, because dacs typically only support 2 channel audio, and you will find this will complicate the set up. Just get the headphone amp.

From a longevity perspective, I think they all have faults. The 990 pro doesn't have a detachable cable. The mobius doesn't have a replaceable battery. And the k712 pro relies on tension in the headband cable to maintain a good fit, which eventually will be lost. I think the sennheiser options ultimately do the best here if you want something to buy for life. You want to be careful when getting information from headphone enthusiasts, since they generally are ignorant of the benefits of audio processing. hrtf processing from the headset itself, like with the mobius, or from elsewhere is required to have the best sound localization with games. Equalization can also help improve the frequency response, like with the high bass and treble on the dt990.

I think the problem with headphone gaming discourse in general is that people fetishize headphone choice, but don't appreciate the power of binaural audio/the limitations of standard stereo audio. And I think the way headphone enthusiasts talk about soundstage has genuinely confused people. Good headphones are not going to magically put in accurate spatial information that the digital audio itself wasn't carrying.

Imo, the important thing is to never play in plain stereo. If the game gives you the option for hrtf, use it. If you have to use virtual surround sound on the surround sound from the game, do that. If the game supports windows spatial sound, you can get good results with the windows 10 stuff (sonic for headphones, atmos for headphone). If you look at some of the most popular multiplayer shooters right now - Fortnite, Apex Legends, Valorant, rainbow six siege, these don't support hrtf. Call of duty Warzone supports win10 spatial sound. Only CSGO, Overwatch, and PUBG have hrtf options built in.

With regular stereo audio, there is only information for left and right directions. When you use virtual surround, you are using the principles of spatial hearing (interaural level difference, interaural time difference, hrtf) to have more directional information in the audio mix, so that objects in the game world are more accurately represented in the audio. Furthermore, if a game incorrectly assumes front facing speakers for headphone users, then moving objects won't have their sounds updated properly as they reach the side. This problem is not possible with surround sound because it has a specified speaker layout and more channels to cover the area. No matter how good the soundstage of a headphone is, it cannot fix these problem, which are going to be inherent to the stereo audio mix. The only solution is going to be to replace the mix with a better one by using virtual surround sound on the surround sound mix.

If you look at the pubg video I linked earlier, it shows how audio processing can improve front vs back localization and eliminate dead zones.

Oh, I thought you were joking. Typically headsets are all in one solutions that are popular at lower price points. I am dubious about sound quality, but for gaming purposes I imagine it will be good enough. And sound quality itself is mainly frequency response, and that can be modified with equalization if people want to put the effort into improving that. On the flip side, my fear when people use headphone+microphone or an analog headset with no processing is that they will be playing games in plain stereo, which I see as a needless loss of spatial information.

Ha, yea, when you get into the audiophile world, things get crazy and people will pay a lot for just a brand logo like sennheiser or beyerdynamic. It is like fashion with Versace.

So, you actually can't hear directions as well with stereo. This is because in stereo, sounds are only broken up into left and right, and this creates problems with front and back. A separate problem is that speaker location isn't specified - headphones are side facing, but actual speakers are generally front facing. If the wrong layout is assumed because of lack of a headphone option, then moving objects won't have their sounds updated properly at certain points. The good news in this situation is that CSGO is one of the rare games that has good audio options. If you select the "advanced 3d audio processing" option, that is a virtual surround sound option, and it will transform a regular headset into a surround sound one. In doing so, it allows you to hear front and back better, as well as avoiding problems with moving sounds. This is also true with pubg, with the hrtf option. If you listen to the video, you will notice that no matter what headphones you use, the hrtf/virtual surround sound audio does a better job with directions and movement than stereo. To get these benefits in other games, say Apex Legends, Fortnite, or Valorant, you have to provide your own virtual surround sound processing on surround sound audio from the game. People tend to be pretty snobby about gaming headsets, but at least they can make this option pretty accessible to people.

Yes rice guru. that seems true.

In terms of motherboard noise, there's two main variables, which is the quality of the motherboard audio, which is related to motherboard price, and how sensitive the headphones are, with the noise being louder on more sensitive IEMs.

are both connectors from the headset going directly to the motherboard, or is there any device in between?

In general, the virtual 7.1 is good in that it can do a better job differentiating front and back sounds. I can't speak to the implementation on this specific headset though. If you want a more detailed explanation -

Between the format and the dac, the dac will always be the bottleneck at 24 bit. There aren't dacs you can buy with 24 bit performance (144db dynamic range), it is like an engineering impossibility. According to audiosciencereview, that dac has 115db dynamic range, or around 19 bits of resolution.

The bit depth and sampling frequency can lower the inherent noise in the digital format. Once you are working with 24 bit audio, for playback, the bottleneck won't be the format, the bottleneck will be the dac quality, since no dac actually has an effective 24 bit resolution (the best dacs are going to be around 21 bits). It is more useful for post work, since you can boost something low in the recording, and you don't have to worry as much about noise. It is similar to the example brought up about recording in more than 4k, so you can zoom in without as much quality loss.

Historically, I think going back to the hd595, and continuing with the hd598, and hd599, these were always recommended for computer use without an amp because of the listed 50 ohm impedance, but imo, it was always a mistake. If you look at impedance vs frequency graphs for these headphones, they all have these peaks around 90hz. People generally misinterpret what that means, but long story short, it means the output impedance of the amp will basically eq the headphones to the shape of that graph, so you should try to get an amp with the lowest output impedance possible. So for example, the jds labs atom, that has an output impedance of 0.1 ohm listed in its specs. The issue is that a lot of motherboards by default will assume you are using active speakers, and will have a 200 ohm output impedance. So that results in a huge bass boost. There are motherboards from Asus that have a sense impedance feature, and will automatically lower the output impedance if they detect headphones. But that only works if people install the software from asus afaik, and I think many people don't bother and just use the default windows driver. And this is a pretty insidious problem. I don't think people notice that the frequency response is wrong. They have been told that these are high quality headphones, so might just think this is what high quality headphones are supposed to sound like.

I used to be in this camp, suggesting audiophile headphones to people over gaming headsets. But it is hard for them to compete in price. For example, from what I can tell, the alienware headset costs $149, while the sennheiser headphones alone costs $199. And then you still have to buy a microphone and figure out a way to incorporate surround to binaural dsp. And the headphones are wired. And those sennheiser headphones are sensitive to high output impedance, so arguably they should be paired with a headphone amp or there is a risk of bloated bass. This is in no way an endorsement of the alienware headset, those may have some serious flaw, I don't know. But I would encourage people to really consider whether their recommendations make sense for everyone.

Generally, 7.1 headphones refer to headphones that don't have many speakers, but are using processing to convert surround sound to a more headphone optimized mix. This technique is also found in some games, like Overwatch when using the dolby atmos for headphone setting, and it looks like it will be available in the playstation 5 as well, as a system level option. Normal stereo only has two directions, left and right. This causes problems in figuring out where sounds are coming from. This is the problem that is addressed by using virtual 7.1 headphones, which allows for more directional information.

So, you have two distinct problems. One is that youtube doesn't support 5.1 afaik. The other is that with toslink, it can only transmit 5.1 with the use of compression eg dolby digital and dts.