Any good surround sound headphones?

[Soroax]

Hi all, I play a game on my phone in which audio and knowing where people are is very important. I was wondering if any of you have any recommendations for preferably wireless headphones. I’m looking for surround sound and for it to be comfortable. Thank you!

[ShortRouter]

nope. no such thing as good surround sound on headphones, let alone wireless. Best buy would be decent open-back stereo headphones with good imaging. There are lots of options depending on budget.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zeos/comments/97mi5s/zguides_headphones/

I wouldn't recommend going wireless.

[Tigerleon]

24 minutes ago, ShortRouter said:

nope. no such thing as good surround sound on headphones, let alone wireless. Best buy would be decent open-back stereo headphones with good imaging. There are lots of options depending on budget.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zeos/comments/97mi5s/zguides_headphones/

I wouldn't recommend going wireless.

Well said. Also I'd recommend a pair of beyerdynamic dt 770 pro 32ohm. I don't really recommend sennheiser since I don't like them for gaming. Dt 770 pro is also good but it is closed. Which means sound leaks less and you can hear less of the outside. Basically with open back headphones it is like you don't even have headphones on. You can hear everything almost. But open back is best for gaming I'd say.

Now it must be 32 or 80 ohm. Because above that you can lose a bit of detail and the volume will get really low.

[ShortRouter]

I love Sennheiser GAME ONE (open-back) and GAME ZERO (closed-back) headsets for competitive gaming. Outstanding comfort, build quality, very good mic and nicely tuned down bass. For music game zero is underwhelming.

[Soroax]

46 minutes ago, ShortRouter said:

nope. no such thing as good surround sound on headphones, let alone wireless. Best buy would be decent open-back stereo headphones with good imaging. There are lots of options depending on budget.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zeos/comments/97mi5s/zguides_headphones/

I wouldn't recommend going wireless.

Are these any good? https://www.amazon.com/Audio-Technica-ATH-M50xBT-Wireless-Bluetooth-Headphones/dp/B07HKVCVSY/ref=mp_s_a_1_1_sspa?dchild=1&keywords=Audio%2BTechnica%2BM50X&qid=1591531594&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUFXVFNWNTZQMjU2SDUmZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTA3OTgxMzEzU0NHQVZXNVZQUjYzJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTA1NTc0NDMzQ0NGNFQ3VVNZMlZGJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfcGhvbmVfc2VhcmNoX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU&th=1

[ShortRouter]

m50x are not bad, i have them myself. These are closed-back studio monitoring headphones, great for critical listening but not great for gaming. Lots of bass and poor stereo imaging. I recommend you have a look at the Zeos headphone guide I linked in my first answer. Any headphone tagged as GAMING will do great.

[an actual squirrel]

I recommend logitech gaming headsets, because their driver software is set up in an intuitive and effective way, and the headsets are affordable. And if you look at their reviews on rtings, the frequency response is also decent.

 

Remember guys, headphone surround sound processing is what allows the audio to convey directions other than left and right and helps ensure good audio panning. You should really make sure you provide it yourself somehow if the game itself doesn't provide it. Games like Overwatch provide Dolby Atmos for Headphone, but most games, like Apex Legends for example, provide no such option.

 

When audiophiles give gaming headphone recommendations, they are often unaware of spatial audio concerns. For instance, simply getting audiophile approved headphones, like say Sennheiser's flagship HD800s, will not address the imaging problems that are inherent to a standard stereo mix. Headphone surround sound processing can address those problems because it is making a new headphone optimized mix from a surround sound source.

[Mazdaspeeding]

Headphone surround sound processing doesn't do that though necessarily.  It messes with the audio mix in different ways from set to set and manufacturer to manufacturer while distorting what the developer intended you to hear.  You get better positioning with a stereo set than a surround set guaranteed.  Virtual Surround Sound in headphones is nothing but a marketing gimmick used to push brightly colored over priced crap.  With the headphones that do have it, it's absolutely advisable to disable it.  

 

You know you hear in stereo anyways right?  A quality open back set is king for gaming.  

[Kasenumi]

 

For the surround effect I recommend Beyerdynamic DT990. Open back over ear headphones give quite a surround effect, it sounds around me, not in my head. I can easily track the source of sound like steps. Also helps to track the location of zombies in World War Z before they hit me. Also ears are not heating as heat is exhausted through little holes. Most people probably prefer isolated headphones but after I bought Open back ones I will never again switch to closed. They are much more relaxing.

Just my opinion on open backs, people might disagree.

[an actual squirrel]

4 hours ago, Mazdaspeeding said:

Headphone surround sound processing doesn't do that though necessarily.  It messes with the audio mix in different ways from set to set and manufacturer to manufacturer while distorting what the developer intended you to hear.  You get better positioning with a stereo set than a surround set guaranteed.  Virtual Surround Sound in headphones is nothing but a marketing gimmick used to push brightly colored over priced crap.  With the headphones that do have it, it's absolutely advisable to disable it.  

 

You know you hear in stereo anyways right?  A quality open back set is king for gaming.  

Okay, hold on a minute. Internally, these games have very detailed object based audio. This is to handle things like audio for moving objects. The process of mixing that to stereo, wherein you basically take everything on the left side and put that in the left channel, and take everything on the right and put that in the right channel, that process is very destructive for directional information, since at that point you only have information for two directions. What you are doing with virtual surround sound is replacing that mix with a less destructive one that takes advantage of how spatial hearing works. That is, in a nutshell, the main advantage to using virtual surround sound for gaming.

 

This is not even just some abstract argument. The games Overwatch and PUBG have virtual surround sound options in their audio menus. Look at this video about PUBG audio

No matter how good your headphones are, the standard stereo mix will have inherent problems with directional audio. You can watch the video with expensive, audiophile approved headphones, and the localization problems don't go away. You can do the same type of tests with other games and realize the type of the mix used is more important for sound localization than headphone choice. 

 

With real life hearing, we only have two ears, and thus two inputs, that is correct. But in real life, the audio emanates from a given direction, and that causes interactions with the environment and head and ears such that spatial information is encoded, which is then decoded by the brain to create the perception of sound coming from that direction. With speakers, that mechanism is maintained, and where you place the speakers will determine what spatial information is encoded. With headphones, you essentially are transmitting an audio signal directly to the ear drum, and the spatial encoding is missing. That is what causes the "inside the head" type of sound when listening to traditional stereo audio mix on headphones, as well as limiting the directional information to just left and right. What you are doing with virtual surround sound in headphones is that you are cutting out the middle man and putting the spatial encoding directly into the audio mix. It's not going to be perfect, since it is typically giving you a generic type of spatial encoding rather than the specific type you would naturally get in real life or with speakers, but it is better than nothing.

[ShearMe]

6 hours ago, Mazdaspeeding said:

 

 

3 hours ago, an actual squirrel said:

 

You're both right. It's silly to buy a "Surround sound headset" because of how questionable their codecs are. At the same time, you do want to enable any virtual surround sound options in-game. Even if a game doesn't provide a headphone surround sound mix, there are software based solutions for this, like Razer surround.

[The Flying Sloth]

To expand on that last reply,
We tend to not recommend 'true' 7.1 headsets here because in real life humans only hear in stereo, two ears creating a binaural 3D image using the minuscule delay between ears (due to the speed of sound) and spectral pinnae cues to localise the audio. The much smaller, multiple, drivers in true surround headphones are each less accurate than the two single drivers in stereo headphones while driving up cost for no benefit in applications with binaural stereo (and given Windows sonic can turn any 7.1 source into binaural audio, many applications don't even need that). There is no reason to buy dedicated 'virtual surround' headphones as literally any stereo headphones are capable of outputting this binaural signal.

In short 'virtual surround' is actually more true to life (at least as far as headphones go) than 'true' surround sound.

As for the M50x being "great for critical listening but not great for gaming", I disagree greatly. The M50x have a 'fun' EQ and are not at all the flat, analytical sound one would use for critical listening. The M40 or M20x come much closer to that and even then they're fairly 'fun' sounding. If you're looking for analytical you'll be looking for open-back, like the HD6xx or some such similar set of cans.

[an actual squirrel]

There were some free software solutions mentioned, and what I really like in this category is hesuvi. That does give you the ability to turn any headphone into virtual 7.1 headphones. Again, that means you can take 7.1 audio from an application and make a more optimal headphone mix out of it, compared to a standard stereo mix.

[Mazdaspeeding]

5 hours ago, ShearMe said:

 

You're both right. It's silly to buy a "Surround sound headset" because of how questionable their codecs are. At the same time, you do want to enable any virtual surround sound options in-game. Even if a game doesn't provide a headphone surround sound mix, there are software based solutions for this, like Razer surround.

That was more or less my point.  You said it better than I could.  Yes, you want to enable any in game options the developers give you. 

 

No, you don't want to enable surround on the headset itself.  

 

You want to hear the audio as the developers intended it basically.

 

Like when I used to play with my Kingston Cloud Revolver S, I had to turn the 7.1 off on the USB dac because it made the sound worse.

 

[an actual squirrel]

Internally, these games have very good spatial audio because the game has to be able to keep track of things as they move around so it can modify the audio appropriately. The problems arise from the conversion to stereo, where a lot of spatial information is lost. When you use these virtual 7.1 headphones, you're telling the game "hey, don't convert to stereo; convert to 7.1, and let me mix that in a way that is more optimal for headphones". When you look at things this way, this is a process of getting more information out of the game instead of losing it.

 

You have to remember that the game generally doesn't know whether users are using speakers or headphones. It is headphones that specifically support "binaural audio", which is the audio with extra spatial information embedded into it. So the game doesn't want to throw binaural audio around, for compatibility reasons. But the surround sound control on headsets, they know they are being used with headphones, so there is no concern about breaking support for speakers.

 

And consider the case of people not using headphones, but using 5.1 speaker systems. Clearly those people should be listening to the surround sound mix and not a stereo mix. So I don't understand this notion of romanticizing the stereo mix as the one the developers intended people to use.

 

[ShearMe]

5 hours ago, an actual squirrel said:

When you use these virtual 7.1 headphones, you're telling the game "hey, don't convert to stereo; convert to 7.1

 

Headphones don't speak to games bro