Surround simulation with headphones on todays sound cards

[BrightCandle]

A lot of the advice about sound cards/DACs is often based on sound quality. This obviously matters when listening to music and such, but for gamers one of the key features of a sound card is how it simulates binaural sound effects on a pair of headphones. Different manufacturers use varying surround sound simulation effects on their cards and there isn't a best one, just the one that matches closest to the way you hear things (based on your body and head shape and size and ear shape). Some games use a pure software simulation solution when headphone mode is selected which is best, whereas others work better with Windows set to 5.1/7.1 and the surround sound simulator enabled on the sound card. This is still in my opinion one of the primary reasons to buy a sound card over the standard motherboard chipset, to get that surround sound simulation. EAX is pretty much irrelvent today, but binaural surround sound on headphones is essential.

 

When looking into this 3 months ago I came across the following video of Battlefield 4 comparing the various cards and their effects (SBX pro, CMSS, Realtek, Razor software and Dolby Headphone). I highly recommend that any one interested in a sound card listen to this, work out which produces the best sense of direction of sound and factor that into their purchasing choice.

 

 

I personally found a sizeable difference when listening to this with some HD 598's and replaced my Xonar D2X with a Soundblaster Z. It definitely improved positioning information in this game and others and while it doesn't actually play music quite as well it games a lot lot better because of the SBX pro settings which at 33% seems to work very well for me.

[xToFxREAPER]

Great video, im using my soundblaster zx with a pair of beyerdynamics custom one pros and have phenomenal positional sound

[h264]

Maybe I'm the only one, but I heard no difference besides volume of the surround rendered effects in the SBX studio. Positioning was accurate both while stationary and moving for all those technologies.

[ShearMe]

Maybe I'm the only one, but I heard no difference besides volume of the surround rendered effects in the SBX studio. Positioning was accurate both while stationary and moving for all those technologies.

 

Everytime I watch this video I think the exact same thing. It's just a bunch of EQ whack-a-mole to me.

[mr moose]

It seems to be common opinion the cmss was the best and sbx is good but not the same.  Read into that what ever you want,  I have been playing 3d shooter games since mono, never needed any fancy surround or simulators, so I never bother with them. 

 

For those curious about onboard and surround, it appears there is a driver you can get to enable cmss on some realtek chips.

[BrightCandle]

They all use different HRTF's so there is more to it than just EQ adjustments as it changes the delays and amount of adjustment of the sound based on direction. I don't know of any EQ that can do that.

[ShearMe]

it changes the delays and amount of adjustment of the sound based on direction

 

Meaning the only thing that changes is the volume of objects based on the distance? Sounds like an EQ to me, though based on distance rather than frequency.  :rolleyes:

[mr moose]

They all use different HRTF's so there is more to it than just EQ adjustments as it changes the delays and amount of adjustment of the sound based on direction. I don't know of any EQ that can do that.

Different hrtf's will have the same preferential outcome as changes in eq. And tbh they won't be that much different from each other as the human head does not vary that much in size with Relation to the speed of sound.