Surround Headset and SATA3 hard drive controller - Opinion seeking

[MrRiplEy[H]]

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.

[Chalenge]

And introduce lag and latency. . .

[BoilerDown]

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!

[MrRiplEy[H]]

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.

[Chalenge]

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.

[guncrasher]

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

[MrRiplEy[H]]

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

[BoilerDown]

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.

[BoilerDown]

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.

[BoilerDown]

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.

[Chalenge]

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.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

You obviously do not play Aces High.

You obviously do not know what you're talking about.

[Chalenge]

If you say so. 

[TwinBoom]

You obviously do not know what you're talking about.

Don't waste your time with this "know it all"

[Chalenge]

Don't waste your time with this "know it all"
(Image removed from quote.)

He is just like you TwinBoom, never accepting that in reality I do know what I'm talking about.

Climb back under your rock.