I bought a Turtle Beach headset and USB sound system about 4 years ago, and it was GREAT. Very high quality sound, and the simulation of spacial positioning was very nice. It was ALMOST like I was really "there".... Made me REALLY mad when a maladjusted ex-neighbor STOLE it from my moving van as I was moving away.
...As I said, I really liked it. The sound quality was the best I've ever experienced from a headset.
HOWEVER, in my [not so humble] opinion, the "5.1 surround sound" claims are somewhat exaggerated. It's true that each earphone has multiple speakers positioned in appropriate spacial positions around the skull of the wearer, and in a headphone situation, I can't figure out a better relationship. But in a "real" situation, a great proportion of the spacial information comes from the natural movement of the listener's head throughout the sound field: A slight movement to the left is, IMHO, sensed with doppler cues, amplitude cues, and phase shifts. Same thing with a slight movement of the head to the right, or forward or back: the listener's EARS are getting closer to some sounds and farther away from others. Head rotation through a natural sound field has the same effect.
That just can't be done in today's headsets, because the sound emitters always move WITH the listener, and in my experience, this significantly degraded the quality of the acoustic spacial interpretation.
This technology can give a pretty good 3d simulation of what is being simulated inside the computer, but it can't model the acoustic effects of what the USER is doing. For that, you need speakers in fixed, optimized locations, spaced around the user.
But for thrilling audio quality, you can't go wrong with Turtle Beach, and you get SOME of the benefit of 5.1 surround sound.
