Vitrual Surround/Virtualization

[Osmium]

     I have been using Realtek's stereo virtualization for awhile and I wonder if that is helping me at all. The general idea of it is to time the sound being played in the left and right ears to mimic how we perceive position in real life but does realtek's software do a good job of it? And would Razer's virtual surround be better(or razer surround something else entirely)?

[helping]

Razer's is probably better.

 

Just put the game you're playing into "headphone" mode and it will pretty much do the exact same thing. The Realtek drivers might process music, not sure if the Razer one will. 

[NewAndreas]

I actually don't notice if im using razer surround or my onboard THX surround, and i am not too sure if you have to have 5.1 enabled in options for it to work!?

For me ingame headphone settings work fine and give me good enough positional audio.

[mr moose]

Well, razors is free so you may as well try it and see,  One bloke on hear just reported that he had been using the dolby implementation on the xonar cards and said it was crap compared to the razor, which in his opinion was also fairly average.    My general understanding is that all artificial implementations of surround distort the quality and the best results are to use the in game headphone settings if they have any.

[creatip123]

Well, razors is free so you may as well try it and see,  One bloke on hear just reported that he had been using the dolby implementation on the xonar cards and said it was crap compared to the razor, which in his opinion was also fairly average.    My general understanding is that all artificial implementations of surround distort the quality and the best results are to use the in game headphone settings if they have any.

 

I second this. I'm using xonar DG, and the dolby headphone feature sounds too reverby/echoey for games. It's like you're constantly in a room, even though you're outside (in the game). 

 

I've also downloaded and used the razer surround. From what I make of it, the main feature of this application is the calibration of the virtual sound positions. With asus'  audio center application, I can do that too, just need more time and patience. Other than that, some bells and whistles (EQ, normalization, stereo enchancement, etc). They work though, just not a 'miracle program' that instantly upgrade the gaming audio to a whole different level.

 

I don't play many games, but in left 4 dead 2, I found that the best positional audio using headphone/headset is when I set the in-game audio settings to 7.1 speakers (instead of 'headphone').