Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: BoilerDown on January 07, 2013, 06:13:41 PM
-
So I've recently graduated from college and held a decent job for a while. Time to spend some money.
I was looking into getting surround sound headphones first of all. Anyone have an opinion on these:
RAZER Tiamat 7.1 Surround Sound Analog Gaming Headset
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826153089
I'd like the ability to locate sounds better than what I'm getting now. It didn't really matter for my WoW years but I think it could help me in FPS and flight sims.
One thing I know I don't want is something plugged into my computer's USB port. I've had ones like that before, and I can't stand the buzzing. The headset I linked gets power from USB, but I can get that from a powered USB hub isolated from my computer.
Secondly, I'd like opinions on a Sata 3 hardware raid controller for my hard drives. The main objective is to increase performance (or decrease the loss of performance) while running FRAPS. I don't really care a lot about actual raid features, but I imagine a hardware raid controller would have the best sustained hard drive write performance. I've had a very hard time finding relevant performance reviews on these. I already have a dedicated SSD on the way for initial storage of FRAPS files. I'm not dead-set on getting a hardware raid controller, I'm just looking for more information for now.
My current hardware includes an Intel 2600K, Geforce GTX 680 (4GB), Asus P8P67 Evo Rev. 3, 12 GB RAM, 1 Plextor PX-256M2P (boot), 2x WD1001FALS (not raided, solo), Windows 7 - 64.
Thanks in advance!
-
The best headset I have ever used is a PC360 from Sennheiser. You wil not be disappointed and it is a high quality piece of kit that will allow you to enjoy games and music equally well.
-
The best headset I have ever used is a PC360 from Sennheiser. You wil not be disappointed and it is a high quality piece of kit that will allow you to enjoy games and music equally well.
I have a Sennheiser HD555 that I got in 2006 that I still haven't managed to break and still sound great. And despite the name I just looked and the PC360 are stereo headphones. I'm interested in opinions on surround headphones in general, and the ones I linked in particular.
Thanks though.
-
boiler there are two types of surround sound. those with several speakers on each side and those with only 1 that simulate surround sound. the headsets with several speakers are in the minority now and the quality has declined. but to be fair the quality of all headsets regardless of number of speakers have declined from good to look great but will break easily.
most headsets that are more than 2 years old they dont make them anymore. my suggestion would be to go to your local best buy or computer store then check those against the online reviews from places like newegg or amazon.
I have a set of triton surround sound with 3 speakers on each side. sound is awesome but they broke about 3 months after i bought them. they are now discontinued. g35 was a simulated surround sound and they also sounded awesome but they only lasted about a year.
but based on the reviews that I now see in most headsets, they wont last you as long as your last pair.
midway
-
Boiler if you are looking for a good sounding headset here is a good start.
http://www.astrogaming.com/a40
I have a pair of the http://www.astrogaming.com/a40-audio-system-upper-playground-edition
and they are awesome. They are rugged and very comfortable to wear over long stretches and have a superior sound when mixed with my SB sound card.
They are a little pricy but when using this to play AH and BF3 the surround actually works great, also they are 3.5 mm gold plated jacks so you dont have the USB.
Check them out and see what you think..
CrazyLwn
-
I've had a pair of Speedlink Medusa 5.1 (http://www.speedlink.com/?p=2&cat=183&pid=25159&paus=1) for over half a decade without problems. I like how they cover the entire ear and how the plush padding doesn't make your head sweat. The overall feeling is very nice, I can wear them for hours without any funny feelings. The half open construction is also a plus for me, it lets me hear when someone of the family wants to talk to me. That's good for them, too, because if I get scared I shout. Loud! And that would scare the excrement out of them. :t
Truth to say, I can't really hear the difference in AH with stereo and 5.1 because the elements are so close to each other. Through the Realtek sound panel I can hear a different sound from front and rear, and if I had more protruding earflaps the difference could be more distinctive.
-
With surround sound you can hear if the airplane is behind you or on the side.
It's pretty cool when a friendly flies by as you can hear him behind then above/below then in front.
midway
-
Thanks for the replies on the headset. Not really sure what I'm going to decide on yet. Still interested in opinions on this and the hard drive controller too.
-
Thanks for the replies on the headset. Not really sure what I'm going to decide on yet. Still interested in opinions on this and the hard drive controller too.
I think few of us have experience with external sata controllers. I believe most of us just use the integrated controllers.
If you already stream directly to an SSD it's pretty hard to believe your performance is bottlenecked there. Most likely FRAPS is just giving you system overhead and that's lagging you down. If you want to experiment on the I/O then I would suggest buying a pci-e based sata raid controller that has its own control chip and set up a raid 0 of 2 or more SSD:s. 2 drives in raid 0 is going to almost double your i/o. Choose a card with its own controller so it can handle the drives without burdening the cpu. Here's one example that's reasonably priced: http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/4306/highpoint_rocketraid_2720sgl_sata_6g_raid_controller_review/index1.html
-
I have a g35 which i have had for a couple years.
I am getting a new pc coming next saturday and thinking of getting 5.1 surround speaker set up :old:
Do you get a better feel for position of planes with speakers which are set up correctly :old:
-
zack yes. just like in the movies you can hear the airplanes as they come from behind to in front of you. of course they have to be close enough to shoot you first in which case it's always cool to hear the guns firing anyway :).
midway
-
Surround sound is a gimmick in headphones. Instead, spend your money on a great sound card and buy some really good sounding stereo headphones. In Aces High you do not need surround headphones in order to have directivity from your sounds.
As to fighting frame drops when using FRAPS? Forget it. You can use a 120Hz monitor and get 60fps if you have a really, really good video card (probably not). Or you can record with Aces High flight recorder and then use FRAPS from the film viewer.
-
Surround sound is a gimmick in headphones. Instead, spend your money on a great sound card and buy some really good sounding stereo headphones. In Aces High you do not need surround headphones in order to have directivity from your sounds.
+1 Which is why I gave you my opinion. I have a good, not great sound card in my rig and the PC360's are able to handle everything I play and listen to from the enhanced game sounds in the JSRS pack for ARMA 2 to classical music and Aces High. Besides for the money you are considering on those Razer headsets you can buy these and not have to worry about adding more software to the system than whatever you use with your sound card to make the sounds exactly like you want them to be.
-
The "directivity" is definitely better with even cheap but actual surround over any, even expensive, stereo headphones. Sounds worse, but "directivity" is better. As I said I use the HD555, which means there's absolutely no reason for me to get the PC360s.
-
No, that would be true if headsets could actually achieve the separation required in order to create a surround environment. The reason headsets cannot is because there is not adequate room between the speakers. You have convinced yourself that it is working, but that's all. If you sit 36" from the monitor and wish to hear surround sound, then the left and right front speakers need to be that same distance (36") at about 30 degrees from your view angle. You might be able to go with as little as 22.5 degrees (23) but no less. Left and right surround need to be at least three-quarters of that 36" separation to the left and right of your seat. Left and right back speakers need to be offset the same as the front, but behind you. The subwoofer would be about half the angle as the left front speaker. That kind of separation for headphones would be painful on the neck at the very least.
Its a gimmick.
Neither the HD555 or the PC360 are surround headphones. Unless you have one of the high end Fatality sound cards(or something very similar), then you have not heard surround in Aces High.
-
No, that would be true if headsets could actually achieve the separation required in order to create a surround environment. The reason headsets cannot is because there is not adequate room between the speakers. You have convinced yourself that it is working, but that's all. If you sit 36" from the monitor and wish to hear surround sound, then the left and right front speakers need to be that same distance (36") at about 30 degrees from your view angle. You might be able to go with as little as 22.5 degrees (23) but no less. Left and right surround need to be at least three-quarters of that 36" separation to the left and right of your seat. Left and right back speakers need to be offset the same as the front, but behind you. The subwoofer would be about half the angle as the left front speaker. That kind of separation for headphones would be painful on the neck at the very least.
Its a gimmick.
Neither the HD555 or the PC360 are surround headphones. Unless you have one of the high end Fatality sound cards(or something very similar), then you have not heard surround in Aces High.
With DSP you can create any room size you want by adding delay to the sound. So as long as the speaker elements produce sound from correct angles it is possible to simulate different environments. But that kind of 3D headphones would need a separate soundcard (or USB) and software to function naturally.
-
And introduce lag and latency. . .
-
Planetside 2 is what I'm mainly playing at the moment. My sound card is an X-Fi ExtremeGamer. I don't believe anyone claimed in this thread that either of the Sennheisers resulted in surround sound instead of stereo, just that they were pretty high quality and were given a recommendation. But I'm still looking for surround recommendations, not stereo recommendations.
As for my claim that "directivity" is better with 5.1 headphones, here's my personal experience with it...
In the past I used to use these 5.1 headphones: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826159003
They cost $65 in April 2005 (using Newegg's order history feature) and they actually enabled me to identify sound directions in games with a very good amount of precision. However they had crappy sound quality and the USB power resulted in a lot of buzzing. And eventually they just broke, one of the ears just snapped off after a year or so's wear and tear.
In July of 2006 I replaced them with the Sennheiser HD 555s: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16826106392 . Now those sounded great, and still do sound great today. The $65 headphones cost me $4.33 per month for 15 months of use. The $126 Sennheisers (which now are hard to find and go for about $170) cost me $1.59 per month for 79 months of use (so far). They are just stereo but as my primary game of choice at the time was World of Warcraft, locating sounds didn't matter much to me. However, when I did play FPS games, mainly during lan parties, I distinctly noticed that I was being handicapped by only having stereo sound.
It is most definitely real, and not a gimmick. The surround headphones actually work, actually enabled me to locate sound sources in games far better than stereo headphones, particularly first person shooters.
Now that I'm playing Planetside 2 primarily, I'm back to wanting to locate sounds well again, as its a FPS (mostly). And as I've been burned buying low quality gear in the past, I don't mind buying something decent that will last for a while, as long as it meets my requirements.
I'll look into the Medusa 5.1 and the A40, thanks!
-
And introduce lag and latency. . .
The whole point of DSP is to introduce lag and latency. All sounds naturally include a mix of direct and delayed sound. The brain interprets the delayed and phase shifted sounds as spatial information - without them no 3D perception would be possible.
-
No, no, no! When you use a soundcard AND software on top of Windows bloatcode you get even more lag and latency. Apples and oranges are fairly similar compared to the difference of true surround and what those headphones give you.
-
boilerdown ignore them and get the surround sound headset you want. just be aware the headset quality has gone down the hill from 3 or 4 years ago. I wouldnt spend more than 100 bucks on a set just because they have a tendency to last less than a year. however you can fix most headsets with a little tape, some dental floss sticks and some crazy glue.
you already know that even though people keep saying, blah, blah it's not surround sound, blah, blah that actually you get surround sound. you have a nice computer with a good connection so latency and blah, blah wont really affect you much.
I have the same sound card and it has some pretty good sound. just make sure the headset you get plugs into the sound card and not into a usb port. if you have speakers you can just buy the splitters they're about 2 bucks each. but dont get the turtle beach z6 as they mike is crappy and you will hear yourself talking and that's annoying at least for me. get one that is 5.1 and get one with 3 speakers on each ear if you can have one.
good luck.
midway
-
No, no, no! When you use a soundcard AND software on top of Windows bloatcode you get even more lag and latency. Apples and oranges are fairly similar compared to the difference of true surround and what those headphones give you.
Audio latencies are not an issue. You'd have to have a pretty horrible delay in audio before you start seeing a disparity between what happens on screen and what you hear. Audio latencies are only an issue if you produce AV content professionally.
LCD panels by themselves introduce a latency to everything you see so if your audio would come in realtime, your screen would lag 10-45ms behind :)
-
Decided to go with the RAZER Tiamat 7.1 over the Astro Gaming A40. No one says anything bad about the A40, but it only emulates 7.1 from a 5.1 source, and it gets its signal through toslink, which adds latency to the audio. The RAZER Tiamat 7.1 uses analog connections for every channel, which means no extra latency and no emulation.
I'll use it for a while and report back here on what I think of it.
-
They (RAZER Tiamat 7.1) arrived an hour ago. The early result is that I would never use these for listening to music. Not since I've had my Sennheiser HD555s for many years. The RAZER has a pass-through device for hooking up to a home theater, I plugged my Sennheisers into the front speaker connection and listened to Serenade of Self-Destruction by Epica. The difference is immediate and obvious, the Sennheisers blow these away. With the passthrough, I'm hoping that I won't care, I'll just use one for gaming and the other for music. Will test actual gaming later today.
-
Well I just finished playing an 8-hour marathon run of Planetside 2. My kill to death ratio was 40% better today than yesterday or my average since I started playing. I didn't do anything different today than any other day, normally go as combat medic but also switch between heavy, engineer, and infiltrator as needed. Only difference was new headphones. Qualitatively I think they work, I feel like I can instinctively locate sounds a lot better than with the stereo headphones. Quantitatively my kills to death ratio improved significantly, and not just over a short timespan, but over 8 hours of prime time game time.
I'm definitely going to keep them. :)
-
Audio latencies are not an issue. You'd have to have a pretty horrible delay in audio before you start seeing a disparity between what happens on screen and what you hear. Audio latencies are only an issue if you produce AV content professionally.
LCD panels by themselves introduce a latency to everything you see so if your audio would come in realtime, your screen would lag 10-45ms behind :)
You obviously do not play Aces High.
-
You obviously do not play Aces High.
You obviously do not know what you're talking about.
-
If you say so. :rolleyes:
-
You obviously do not know what you're talking about.
Don't waste your time with this "know it all"
(http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/9876/03sundaysknowitallwebr.jpg)
-
Don't waste your time with this "know it all"
(http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/9876/03sundaysknowitallwebr.jpg)
He is just like you TwinBoom, never accepting that in reality I do know what I'm talking about.
Climb back under your rock.
-
Climb back under your rock.
If the shoe Fits
-
He is just like you TwinBoom, never accepting that in reality I do know what I'm talking about.
Climb back under your rock.
I've been on AH since 2000 and am currently playing, just as a note :) So you're pretty much clueless as far as I can see. You didn't bother to check facts before posting.
-
I'm using the Logitech g35 surround sound headset. It's USB which I prefer to analog. It has a clear mic and good EQ controls. It DOES NOT have a flat response by any means. It's a razzle dazzle bass boosting commercial product designed to appeal to the masses. I don't care, like 'em anyways. I have a pair of in-ear monitors I hook up to my Pandora when I desire fidelity [as much as compressed digital can provide].
I can tell whether the plane is too my left and in front or to my left and slightly behind me. If the product works as intended, it's not a gimmick. Or, I've been fooled into being able to accurately tell the location of an enemy tank.
Get the best surround sound headset you can afford. Or get a full speaker setup. You'll be satisfied either way. Headsets save on space though.
Im surprised at Chalenge's contempt at the proposition that two drivers can accurately reproduce 3d sound. We mere mortals have only two ears yet in nature, we can tell from which tree a bird chirps. How? The brain processes the delay it took the sound to reach one ear after the other, the change in timbre due to reflections, and phase variance due to those delayed reflections. All a headset manufacture needs to do is model these acustic properties. If it's a gimmick, it's only because the model fails. The theory, however, is completely sound.