The real-world comparison between surround (head)sets for gaming

[Diango]

I wasn't aware of the existance of LTT forums but then again I'm from Europe )).

I found this forum through this thread:

 

 

I'm a casual gamer and a relic it seems, as I still rely on a physical 5.1 setup for gaming where a prominent title in my collection is CS2 with about a thousand hours into it. I've played the former revisions too, up to and including 1.6 in my past. And for as long as I can remember, I've always relied on 5.1 setups which included, at some point, the (in)famous Zalmann 5.1 headsets with 6 physical drivers.

 

Now, I don't want to call foul of anyone having done research on this subject up to and including the LTT team themselves (and yes, I have reviewed their video on this topic) but even in my Zalmann days people have tested me on this and I could blindly point to within 20 degrees of accuracy the location of any nade or footstep in game. Nowadays I rely on a simple Soundblaster Audigy with a Logitech Z906 setup towards the same purpose and this works very well for me.

 

Wanting to challenge myself and certainly seeing the benefit of a good pair of headphones (not bothering my sleeping kids is one, but also a prominent point being the annoying echo towards my teammates when using voice chat, so I have to rely on PTT always) I have tried switching to a pair of 'software' surround headphones. Now, in my defense, I didn't use a very expensive pair: I tried the https://support.creative.com/Products/ProductDetails.aspx?prodID=20154&prodName=Sound+Blaster+Tactic3D+Alpha&page=4 Tactic 3d Alpha by Creative Labs which at least does come with a 3d audio engine but also with a USB plug (not my favorite because of the potential for unwanted latency but it was but an experiment) and I will happily grant that there are better solutions out there.

 

I tried every audio setting available including none at all and letting CS itself render the audio for me (they have a special setting for headphones).

 

The result: I was completely confused and out of it. I had a really hard time orienting myself and could not for the life of me figure out audio direction anymore, and I gave it a really solid try (several spaced out tries, actually).

In the LTT video they rely heavily on turning exercises where they have to 'gun' the target at the right moment. This would, in my laymen's mind, be easily achieved with any pair of regular stereo headphones since you can simply rely on the sound balance between left and right to find center. And I have witnessed (although my experience is of course highly subjective) that when playing in teams, I'm most often correct in calling out distance, direction and based on map knowledge, often also the relative position of a sound event on the map, even on challenging multi-level ones like Nuke. The big difference however, is that I do this standing still. Therefore, I cannot rely on simple left/right balance and my speakers have to accurately 'position' the sound in a 360 degree circle which I think the CS engine in combination with my soundblaster does admirably. I cannot however see how 2 drivers positioned directly on the ear can achieve the same effect since your head and the intricate shape and profile of a primate's ears (I'm not well versed on this topic, but I've read about this) play an important role in this process.

My best guess based on (absence of) knowledge of this subject is that one can definitely be trained on a replacement of this 'natural' ability of humans to position sound by relying on 1) known facts in the game you are playing and 2) associating this with a system of audio techniques that are, as I understand, very vendor-specific. My theory would therefore imply that a veteran CS player with many hundreds of hours logged on a certain technology would need to 'readjust' when switching to other sound tech (by another vendor). But I'm just a casual gamer with no real means to gather large scale data on this or test it in any substantial way.

 

I would love for LTT to further dig into this because although I will admit I'm partial to the speaker setup and therefore have some form of subjective stake in this, I do truly believe true surround exists, is different from and cannot be replaced on a one-on-one basis with any headset that possesses less drivers and directional ability than a surround speaker setup that claims the same amount of channels (4.0, 5.1, 7.1 and so on).

Anyone with interesting info to share on this?

 

 

 

 

[Holmes108]

41 minutes ago, Diango said:

Anyone with interesting info to share on this?

 

 

 

 

 

Not really, but I will say I'm also a 5.1 surround speaker setup guy too. I play through my TV in my main living room.

 

It was actually quite a chore getting it to work properly though, using my regular Samsung HTIB and after several failed attempts at getting my Nvidia card to recognize my receiver as anything but stereo through HDMI. I then tried multiple optical/SPDIF dongles and devices, until I finally just purchased a creative PCI soundcard, like it's 1999 again, and got it working.

 

I share all of that just to reinforce that I'm all about the 5.1 physical speakers. I'm also a single player/local co-op 95% of the time, so that's why I prefer it so much. 

 

All that being said, I've played a lot of private server co-op games with family, and my fair share of Warzone, using both the default windows spatial audio, and DTS for headphones when I gamed on my Xbox, and now use a USB Razer "7.1 surround sound" headset on my PC. I've found both to be more than adequate when playing FPS titles. Not as good as the real physical speakers, by any stretch. But I've never felt like I had trouble locating enemies in general, unless there was an audio issue with the game, which would often be patched. It's not always perfect though, no.

 

I find it to be an impressive technology, in general, the faux surround. I don't know how much better it can get, but despite only using it occasionally, I find it does the job quite well.

 

However, I do think it's very true that some people may have to train themselves, or adjust to these different technologies, or even from game to game. That doesn't seem like a stretch to me at all. 

[Diango]

Oh yes I very much recognize the relentless issues with surround over HDMI, it's a nightmare! I always have to turn on my Beamer, Sony Receiver (which also switches the HDMI signal) and Nvidia Shield in that exact order to make sure the mediabox can 'see' the receiver to have any form of surround because it will default to stereo otherwise. The receiver will support just about any form of surround in existance but it will only be recognized when the sending device (in this case my shield box) can 'poll' the audio device it seems. And that is where I think TV setups often go awry because a TV only ever has 2 speakers and thus will report being a stereo device when questioned. The only way around this is to force the sending device (your player of sorts) towards outputting your signal of choice (because your TV will pass it through unaltered regardless in most cases).

 

What I fail to understand in this whole endeavour, and to this day I'm still looking for a replacement headset for my long-since dead and buried Zalmann since it used to work well, is why they won't make a proper spaced-out-driver headset anymore. Clearly different, well-positioned speakers/drivers can have a marked effect in better audio placement but the Razr example in the referenced LTT video just has them all crammed in a single earpiece, this was NOT the case with the Zalmann. It had it auxilliary drivers placed on 'outriggers' for lack of a better term:

 

 

 

and to me that is not the same as Razr's implementation.

Maybe LTT's results would have been different had their tests been run over a longer period of time with people actually getting accustomed to the testing setup? I do remember him mentioning that they all had better results with their own setups, implying that some form of learning/adaptation curve is in play here.

[Cocococo]

The simple truth is that X.X surround headsets are a gimmick, Atmos sucks in headphones but it's better at masking the extremely poor imaging and soundstage that multi driver headsets use. The most complex audio engines that games use is called HTRF (Heat Related Transfer Function, you may have seen it in Valorant) 

 

"A head-related transfer function (HRTF), also known as a head shadow, is a response that characterizes how an ear receives a sound from a point in space. As sound strikes the listener, the size and shape of the head, ears, ear canal, density of the head, size and shape of nasal and oral cavities, all transform the sound and affect how it is perceived, boosting some frequencies and attenuating others. Generally speaking, the HRTF boosts frequencies from 2–5 kHz with a primary resonance of +17 dB at 2,700 Hz. But the response curve is more complex than a single bump, affects a broad frequency spectrum, and varies significantly from person to person.

A pair of HRTFs for two ears can be used to synthesize a binaural sound that seems to come from a particular point in space. It is a transfer function, describing how a sound from a specific point will arrive at the ear (generally at the outer end of the auditory canal). Some consumer home entertainment products designed to reproduce surround sound from stereo (two-speaker) headphones use HRTFs. Some forms of HRTF processing have also been included in computer software to simulate surround sound playback from loudspeakers." From Wikipedia, HTRF functions more like a live EQ adjustment than faking multiple drivers which is what the 7.1 systems fundamentally try to do, unfortunately the acoustic environment inside the headset shell needs to be very dampened (i'll explain this in more detail later) this heavy dampening enables the virtual surround to seem more detailed than it really is. 

42 minutes ago, Diango said:

I'm partial to the speaker setup and therefore have some form of subjective stake in this, I do truly believe true surround exists, is different from and cannot be replaced on a one-on-one basis with any headset that possesses less drivers and directional ability than a surround speaker setup that claims the same amount of channels (4.0, 5.1, 7.1 and so on).

I'm sorry to tell you that multiple drivers in headphones is a really bad idea, it works in IEM's and therefore should work with headphones right? sadly tuning headphones is a lot more tricky than an IEM and one of the key parts of tuning is dampening, anyone who's made speakers before will tell you about sound feedbacking into itself and RUINING the sound of the speaker. The same thing happens with headphones, it's why open and closed back headphones are as different as they are, the "openness" of an open back headphone is a lot easier to diffuse sound through, this makes tuning easier and as an added bonus because open backs physically have more air to move around they tend to have far wider soundstages and image far better than closed counterparts. Gamers tend to be children-teenagers and young adults, their houses tend to be louder, and have less budget for every part of their setup, mix in the loudness of environment and diminishing budget and you have a recipe for cheap closed back headphones to be the only option for lots of gamers. 

 

Closed headphones are extremely hard to tune, you have far more reflections in the earcup than a speaker box because they need to fit on a human head, a poor seal allows bass to escape and spoil music, you need a lot of dampening to stop the reflections and that's hard enough to mass produce, let alone also have the dampening give you a good environment to make the music also sound good. The immense difficulty is why so many closed backs sound atrocious, regardless of price, because of the difficulty in making good sounding pairs of closed backs an overwhelming majority of audio enthusiasts top 5 closed headphones list looks like this; AKG K361 and 371, Shure 440 and 840, Audeze Maxwell, maybe an Aurorus Australis or DCA AEON if they've tried a pair. (Australis sound better, but Dan Clark Audio are way more common) 

 

To drag this all back to gaming headsets, the virtual surround software uses the overdampened internals of headsets to play sounds into a manufacturer assigned places, this is unquestionably better than a non-surround headset of similar value and quality, but outside of the niche use (and when the games audio engine meshes well with whatever headset builder made your headset, bad virtual surround sounds AWFUL) the regular acoustic separation and sound signatures conventional headphones offer is better for everything outside of a few games with enough polish to let the virtual surround not drag you out of immersion. For an objective "are they good" the answer is no, the most expensive gamerbrand headsets made by Razer and Steelseries get absolutely destroyed by a relatively cheap pair of Shure 440A's for music, instrument separation, soundstage and imaging (especially in non-multiplayer games) makes for a more immersive experience, and said expensive gamerbrands then get nuked by the Audeze Maxwell (i've praised these to no end in other threads, suffice to say they are the best buy in audio) 

 

However when you consider the circumstances of the intended audience the virtual surround and Atmos headsets make a lot of sense, they for all intents and purposes are a step above what used to be previously available, obviously open back headphones do a better job. For a quick example the FiiO FT3 are some of the best imaging headphones under 500usd, at around 300usd msrp for the FT3 many headsets look pointless and a scam in comparison, but the FiiO's are wired only, have no inbuilt mic, let all outside noise straight into your ears and tend to reveal flaws in gaming audio engines rather than immerse you (yes they are that good) with the typical surround headset you aren't going to encounter any of these problems because they're designed to solve them, at the cost of their many weaknesses compared with regular closed headphones. 

 

tldr; virtual surround only good when you're the intended audience who doesn't have the budget or technical know-how to get vastly superior equipment

[Holmes108]

  

30 minutes ago, Diango said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow, look at those headphones! lol. 

 

I've never actually tried headphones that had multiple physical speakers on each side. I'd like to, so I can compare to the virtual surround stuff.

 

Yeah, the HDMI surround thing was crazy annoying. It's an ancient 1080p receiver, and shockingly I've never really had any issues with other devices regarding any HDMI handshake issues, or 5.1 issues. Because it's 1080p, I only use it for audio nowadays, and even use ARC for everything now (except my PC) and it all works flawlessly, which is surprising considering what I hear about others experiences with ARC online.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Holmes108]

5 minutes ago, Cocococo said:

The simple truth is that X.X surround headsets are a gimmick....

 

....tldr; virtual surround only good when you're the intended audience who doesn't have the budget or technical know-how to get vastly superior equipment

 

This seems a little excessive. I mean, people should understand that there's no substitution for the real thing, and I'd fight against marketing that tried to suggest too strongly anything different.

 

But at the end of the day, virtual suround does give a sense of spatial awareness. Gamers use these 'gimmicks' to great effect. It's not placebo that we can tell where enemies are located. Having the feature turned on is, generally speaking, better than not having it turned on, in my experience.

[Cocococo]

9 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

 

This seems a little excessive. I mean, people should understand that there's no substitution for the real thing, and I'd fight against marketing that tried to suggest too strongly anything different.

 

But at the end of the day, virtual suround does give a sense of spatial awareness. Gamers use these 'gimmicks' to great effect. It's not placebo that we can tell where enemies are located. Having the feature turned on is, generally speaking, better than not having it turned on, in my experience.

Yeah the marketing hypes up virtual surround, and it does spatial awareness decently in games, my point is that when you compare them to the kind of headphones you can get that aren't labelled "gaming headset" the headsets suddenly get a whole lot less impressive, especially given the inflated prices such tech gives the headsets

[Holmes108]

7 minutes ago, Cocococo said:

Yeah the marketing hypes up virtual surround, and it does spatial awareness decently in games, my point is that when you compare them to the kind of headphones you can get that aren't labelled "gaming headset" the headsets suddenly get a whole lot less impressive, especially given the inflated prices such tech gives the headsets

 

Oh yeah, definitely agree there. Kinda like comparing a high end chair to a gaming chair lol.

[Diango]

Wow, this is really in-depth knowledge, thank you for sharing :).

 

So, summing up what I think I'm getting from your explanation @Cocococo, I should stop trying to replace my 'true' surround setup for a headset and hoping that I can expect the same level of audio placement/perception in competitive gaming? Virtual surround headphones are a step up from default stereo, but fall short on general audio quality because they spend all their effort and money on the 'surround' part and not on implementing actual quality components otherwise?

 

It would certainly lay this matter to rest for me, it's just that I have been told by so (so so) many other competitive gamers that I should 'ditch the speakers because headphones are infinitely better for gaming'....

[Cocococo]

30 minutes ago, Diango said:

Wow, this is really in-depth knowledge, thank you for sharing :).

 

So, summing up what I think I'm getting from your explanation @Cocococo, I should stop trying to replace my 'true' surround setup for a headset and hoping that I can expect the same level of audio placement/perception in competitive gaming? Virtual surround headphones are a step up from default stereo, but fall short on general audio quality because they spend all their effort and money on the 'surround' part and not on implementing actual quality components otherwise?

 

It would certainly lay this matter to rest for me, it's just that I have been told by so (so so) many other competitive gamers that I should 'ditch the speakers because headphones are infinitely better for gaming'....

Pro players use IEM's for pretty much all competitions, if you want something a lot closer to your surround speakers you won't get it from virtual surround, for speakers not being great for gaming i do kinda agree, if you want great headphones for soundstage and detail there are a few good (somewhat lol) cheap headphones out there that will be great for you. 

[Diango]

42 minutes ago, Cocococo said:

Pro players use IEM's for pretty much all competitions, if you want something a lot closer to your surround speakers you won't get it from virtual surround, for speakers not being great for gaming i do kinda agree, if you want great headphones for soundstage and detail there are a few good (somewhat lol) cheap headphones out there that will be great for you. 

Oh I'm not looking for Cheap perse, it's just that I don't believe expensive 'gaming' headsets will do any wonders over the cheap ones. I do wonder though how to interpret the 'soundstage' you mention. I love a very scenic story story like Metro Exodus with thumping audio and good music or an adventure in Sniper Elite 5, but I don't have the feeling I'm missing anything audio-wise on those. When doing a massive battle on BF5 64-player of course louder is better and it gets really immersive this way. Apart from surround (for which the differences are clear to me now) what other sound/immersion aspects could a quality headphone improve on, for me, in this setup?