Is the Arctis 7's 7.1 only snake oil

[AlfonsLM]

Is the surround on the Arctis 7 just snake oil or have I missed somthing like a hiden driver or is it only simulated virtual surround

[AHaskin14]

Its simulated Virtual Surround. True 7.1 would require 7 speakers and a sub.

[LHJKO]

Unless the some how found  out a way to put 7 speakers in a hidden dimension behind the headset  its snake oil 

[AlfonsLM]

I know that it is virtual 7.1 at most but that require 8 channels but the drivers only have 2

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 hours ago, AlfonsLM said:

I know that it is virtual 7.1 at most but that require 8 channels but the drivers only have 2

you have 2 ears, so 2 speakers. You can do directional sound with headphones with 2 speakers just fine. 

 

You need 7.1 with speakers as you can hear where the speaker is. 

 

With headphones, you can simulate all of the other speakers and directional sound.

 

So its not 7.1, but it does have directional sound, like with all headphones.

[AlfonsLM]

I know that but you can't de compress stereo to 7.1 and I was talking about the system drivers. Whith 7.1 are you supposed to be able to tell if a sound is from the back or the front and you can't do it whit stereo

[Froody129]

Stereo surround on headphones is great. The "7.1" on gaming headsets very often causes noise artifacts and is generally not recommended. 

 

I would in general dissuade someone from buying higher end gaming headsets as they're a ripoff in terms of build quality and sound quality. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 hours ago, AlfonsLM said:

I know that but you can't de compress stereo to 7.1 and I was talking about the system drivers. Whith 7.1 are you supposed to be able to tell if a sound is from the back or the front and you can't do it whit stereo

You can convert stero to 7.1 with things like dolby pro logic and can convert 7.1 to headphones with things like dolby headphones.

 

You can tell if sound is back or front with headphones.

 

Headphones are different than stero in how you mix them.

 

Get some headphones on and listen to this. 

Your listening to 2 speakers and can hear all around you.

 

 

[AlfonsLM]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can convert stero to 7.1 with things like dolby pro logic and can convert 7.1 to headphones with things like dolby headphones.

 

You can tell if sound is back or front with headphones.

 

Headphones are different than stero in how you mix them.

 

Get some headphones on and listen to this. 

Your listening to 2 speakers and can hear all around you.

 

 

That's a binaural recordings and no you can convert a stereo recording to emulated surround and not virtual surround (note that this isn't always true)

[AlfonsLM]

13 minutes ago, Froody129 said:

Stereo surround on headphones is great. The "7.1" on gaming headsets very often causes noise artifacts and is generally not recommended. 

 

I would in general dissuade someone from buying higher end gaming headsets as they're a ripoff in terms of build quality and sound quality. 

I did own a pair of cheep 5.1 headphones whit virtual 7.1 and they are probably the best "gaming" headset I have owned yet six years later (Trust GXT 26 5.1 surround USB headset)

Edit: The 7.1 did actually work on them and I could tell if something was in front of me and somewhat easy if it was behind

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 hours ago, AlfonsLM said:

That's a binaural recordings and no you can convert a stereo recording to emulated surround and not virtual surround (note that this isn't always true)

You can convert from 7.1 to binaural with things like dolby headphone. Also games can make binaural audio.

 

 

[AlfonsLM]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can convert from 7.1 to binaural with things like dolby headphone. Also games can make binaural audio.

 

 

It is super demanding to convert surround to a binaural recording and Dolby don't have a program for that but they do have stuff to make a virtual surround recording, it is a RELAY BIG DIFFERENT between the three things.

Virtual surround is a way to APPROXIMATE surround. (Can be implemented in games)

Binaural recording is a way to RECORD stereo as we hear it. (Need special equipment)

"Emulated" surround is a AUDIO EFFECT that try to amplify audio clues that we listens for to hear direction. (It don't work on anything that isn't a recording)

[an actual squirrel]

I can't speak for the quality of steelseries, but virtual surround sound in general works like this:

1. You have a dummy head in a room with 7 directional speakers

2. make a binaural recording for each speaker to get data on what actually defines the direction the speaker represents

3. program a dsp to recreate that, converting 7.1 input to binaural ouput.

 

So for example, in the case of the back left speaker, the dsp sees this in the 7.1 data, which is just 8 mono streams packaged together. The dsp knows what a back left speaker sounds like in a binaural recording, so it simply does that transformation for anything in that channel.

[an actual squirrel]

So when, for example, a back left channel is played with virtual surround sound, the dsp takes into account the fact that it hits the left ear first, and then hits the right ear (the delay is the distance between ears/ speed of sound). The right ear will have a reduction in higher frequencies due to them being blocked by the head. Compared to a front channel, some frequencies will be a lot lower in left ear because they are coming from behind and being blocked by the outer ear. These patterns can be seen on a neuronal level, and are responsible for the perception of direction.

 

In a traditional stereo mix, back left simply goes to the left channel, and all that other information is left out. This is why I think all headphone users should be gaming with some type of virtual surround sound. It may take a little getting used to, but the audio stream itself is much more complex in this case.

[Acquire]

All I know is I've tried steelseries' 7.1 virtual surround and it sounds awful.  Completely destroys any semblance of clarity.  All you need is good stereo headphones with a decently wide soundstage playing stereo sound to get good quality directional sound. This isn't that hard to do, but for some reason all gaming headsets, that I've tried at least, have super narrow soundstages, even narrower than expected for closed back headphones.  My best guess as to why is that they're trying to get you to install their software to enable virtual surround sound and get into their ecosystem of hardware/software.

[JZStudios]

I'mma just skip almost everything and say that most if not all virtual surround is terrible. Some do give you a bit of positional awareness, but it seems to always be at the colossal drawback of any form of actual audio quality and clarity. It usually just muffles the hell out of it.

Razer has some virtual sound program you can try out, I didn't like it, especially compared to my actual surround. I THINK with Razer though you set your audio to surround and it simulates it down to stereo by playing the audio in an empty virtual room with 2 "mics" placed at your earhole locations. Everyone else is right, just run stereo, if the game doesn't do proper stereo there's no way in hell it's doing proper surround.

Even better, just take two decent stereo speakers and place em directly either side of you, just like headphones, but you get the big audio and no headphone hair.