7.1 Surround Sound DAC?

ShadyOrb09 · May 30, 2017

Hello, I'm buying some Sennheiser HD 598SE headphones, but I'm also quite competitive in video games, so I always wanted to have the advantage, and I find having 7.1 surround is a must have for me. I'll have to admit though I have no clue what I'm talking about, as far as audio goes I've got zero clue, so it'd actually be really nice if someone could tell me where to get started as far as learning about headphones/audio.

I'd prefer if it was on the cheaper side, but I'm not exactly sure how expensive something like that would be so...

I also want a DAC instead of a sound card because it's driver-less.

Also, instead of spending $200+ couldn't I just use a virtual surround sound software like Razer Surround (what I'm currently using)?

Cheers guys.

Spuriae · May 30, 2017

You only have two ears. 7.1 implies that there are 8 audio channels. Any headphones that claim to be 7.1 are lying (aside from a small subset of headphones with many drivers which sound bad anyways). Any DAC that is truly 7.1 will not be able to push all of those channels into a single pair of headphones. Any DAC that claims to be able to do so is not truly 7.1 and is actually a cheap USB audio converter with software effects.

The Razer software will work just fine if you want to try out virtual surround sound. Just be warned that the demo uses two differently eq'd clips and is not representative of what things will really sound like. All I noticed when I was using it in games was the channels were artificially separated more, which made the sound feel more expansive but made accurate positioning worse. The natural soundstage and imaging on your headphones is more effective.