which headphone?

Bjorn24 · May 28, 2018

Oke I'm looking for a good pair of heaphones for gaming.
For me it is important to get good directional audio to know where the enemies are.

which headphones is the best for it?
- AKG k712 pro

- sennheiser hd598

And is the hd598 better than the sennheiser game one? I like the added mice...

EsaT · May 28, 2018

Bass neutral AKG K701/K702 are best for maximal details...

And available for extremely affordable price.

K712's above neutral fun bass compromises distinguishing of details to notch lower level.

(though use of bass neutralizing equalizer could change that)

HD595/8 falls step behind AKG in sound stage size/"detail whoring".

And even with added ModMic AKG K702 isn't that much.

Myself got AKG K702, K712, Beyerdynamic DT990 and retired tape keeping pieces from falling HD595. (fashion design isn't mechanically great for durability)

Bjorn24 · May 30, 2018

On 29-5-2018 at 12:21 AM, EsaT said:

Bass neutral AKG K701/K702 are best for maximal details...

And available for extremely affordable price.

K712's above neutral fun bass compromises distinguishing of details to notch lower level.

(though use of bass neutralizing equalizer could change that)

HD595/8 falls step behind AKG in sound stage size/"detail whoring".

And even with added ModMic AKG K702 isn't that much.

Myself got AKG K702, K712, Beyerdynamic DT990 and retired tape keeping pieces from falling HD595. (fashion design isn't mechanically great for durability)

So you say that the k701/k702 will be better than dt990, k712 and hd598 for gaming?
And is there much difference between k701 and k702?

Also with which dac/amp do you have it paired for gaming?

EsaT · May 30, 2018

7 minutes ago, Bjorn24 said:

So you say that the k701/k702 will be better than dt990, k712 and hd598 for gaming?
And is there much difference between k701 and k702?

Also with which dac/amp do you have it paired for gaming?

Really depends on what you want.

For "competitiveness"/details AKG K701/702 are pretty much that "god-mode/wallhack" for binaural sound and next step would be game showing precise locations of sound sources in some map.

(difference is detachable cable in K702 vs fixed cable in 701)

Bass is there and actually goes respectably low for open dynamic headphone, but it simply always takes back seat to details. (unless source signal has emphasized bass)

K712 has above neutral bass punch, but foot steps and such details aren't so obvious when there are lower frequency sounds.

So while higher in "fun factor", competitiveness is step behind K702.

DT990 has notch smaller sound stage (like Sennheiser) and with that above neutral bass it has little more "fun factor" than K712, while being little behind in details.

But that doesn't mean it doesn't beat closed design gaming trinkets by light year and make them feel like having head in bucket under water.

Sennheiser can't fully match AKG's sound stage and especially detail whoring, but neither it has fun bass punch of DT990 or K712.

As for comfort if you have small (especially downward narrowing) head that "automatic" adjustment of AKG might have tendency for ear cups to try to creep down.

Manual adjustments don't suffer from that, and in case of Beyer has really lots of adjustment range.

DAC is fashion term for selling less functionality at high price.

They don't have access to any special components over sound cards, better of which actually use very good or top level D/A converters.

And now Sound BlasterX AE-5 has headphone output which is good for pretty much any headphone, with its very low output impedance and good output power/voltage range.

Though haven't bought it because of using Objective2 for driving headphones.

When looking for good way to connect two different headphones (other for friend) to PC five years ago didn't find anything technically good or available for reasonable price.

So bought two DIY kits and assembled them.

That makes it also easy (and lot more reliable) to compare headphones side by side.

For that technical conversion of signal from digital to analog reaching accuracy of human hearing doesn't need any special devices:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/high-end-pc-audio,3733-19.html

And besides all of other functionality over stereo DAC sound cards also give binaural sound simulation from any source (game/video player) capable to outputting 5.1 sound.

Most of games don't even have any real sound settings.

And hence if they see Windows telling them to use 2.0/stereo, they output stereo speaker mix, which doesn't even give proper left-right immersion with headphones:

Sound from left speaker reaches also right ear and vice versa, something which doesn't happen with headphones.