KVR Audio

MeldaProduction · Post by **MeldaProduction** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 12:14 pm

Hey folks, I'd like to get 7.1 headphones for some surround stuff (I have 7.1 monitors, almost impossible to configure properly, huge, wires everywhere...). I noticed these are mostly for gamers

. Do you know any "studio quality" ones? Or some good experiences with the "gamer" ones?

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 12:28 pm

I bought a 7.1 gaming headset last week, to check out the sound, and how the virtual surround works. Was pretty disapointing to say the least. The spatial impression was worse than in stereo, i couldn't make out whether the sound comes from front right, center right, or back right. I read that dedicated sound cards (the headset i had had a USB sound card attached, which sucked big time) often have better virtual surround functionality, so you're probably better off with a good sounding headset, and the sound card doing the surround function anyway. For example the X-Fi Soundblaster Extreme Music does it, and is a quite affordable good consumer/gaming card. So basically, if you have some good headphones, just use those, and get a sound card/audio interface with virtual surround function. Not sure though if many audio interfaces have that, so you might end up having to buy a gaming sound card.

Tbh, i wouldn't expect too much though. It'll always just be an emulation of what you can do with a real 7.1 speaker setup.

MeldaProduction · Post by **MeldaProduction** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 12:30 pm

Hmmm, that's a little disappointing

. Which exactly did you buy?

V0RT3X · Post by **V0RT3X** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 12:35 pm

These are higher end 7.1 headphones im interested in.

http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-audio/razer-tiamat-71

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 12:43 pm

MeldaProduction wrote:Hmmm, that's a little disappointing . Which exactly did you buy?

I bought the Logitech G430 headset. Sound quality over the USB sound chip was very disappointing, very muffled and loud noise. They were better when connected directly to the headphone output, but still not as good as my Superlux 30 € phones. Brought them back to the store yesterday.

MeldaProduction · Post by **MeldaProduction** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 12:46 pm

Well, I don't assume 7.1 headphones would sound as good as normal studio stereo headphones, but at least they should sound "good" and mainly the surround should be well reproduced.

V0RT3X · Post by **V0RT3X** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 12:47 pm

You should take a look at the razor tiamats.

Shy · Post by **Shy** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 12:48 pm

Like chk071 said, get headphones that aren't a joke, instead. That means a decent model from a serious company like Audio-Technica or Sennheiser, not ridiculous celebrity brands. Use normal, proper stereo downmixing. If you want, there are various lousy so-called HRTF (not true), virtual surround, etc. processors in native software as well as DSP (like in "gamer sound cards"), or you could mess with stereo pan laws in the channel mixers of various players or audio filters that give you that option. Games have proper stereo output with no need for downmixing, which sounds better than any "surround headphone"'s horrible processing.

MeldaProduction · Post by **MeldaProduction** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 12:52 pm

V0RT3X - I did, but they don't sell them here yet. Did you try them?

Shy: The whole point is to actually check 7.1 sound without need to use the horrible 7.1 monitors, fixing acoustics and stuff... Don't worry, I'm not going to use them for mixing or anything

. And for the record, the virtual surround stuff a'la HRTF etc., I tried, doesn't really work well to me. Better then nothing though... But as I said, it's not the point really.

Shy · Post by **Shy** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 12:57 pm

My point is that plain proper stereo downmixing is always better than the various "virtual surround" downmixers. If you want to hear the sound well, that's what you should use. If you really want accurate 7.1 monitoring, you do have to use that amount of speakers, with proper alignment, but I understand that you don't need that, anyway.

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 1:00 pm

These maybe?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00JL93NZU/r ... 64KA67FJAM

I was looking into these but since I already have Sennheisser 650s I decided in the end to slightly lower my surround expectations and go for one of these:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/DSS2-Dolby-Proc ... beach+dss2

it creates a virtual 5.1 config (as long as the original game/DVD supports Dolby 5.1) and I keep my nice quality headphones.

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 1:06 pm

V0RT3X wrote:You should take a look at the razor tiamats.

Actually these are the first ones I have come across that do real surround (with positioned speakers) as opposed to virtual - even that 9.1 Sony is still virtual.

http://www.razerzone.com/gb-en/gaming-a ... -tiamat-71

Wonder what the sound quality is like though? - the individual speakers must be pretty tiny.

MeldaProduction · Post by **MeldaProduction** » Tue Jun 30, 2015 1:14 pm

aMUSEd wrote:
V0RT3X wrote:You should take a look at the razor tiamats.
Actually these are the first ones I have come across that do real surround (with positioned speakers) as opposed to virtual - even that 9.1 Sony is still virtual.

http://www.razerzone.com/gb-en/gaming-a ... -tiamat-71

Wonder what the sound quality is like though? - the individual speakers must be pretty tiny.

Ha! They sell it here in a few shops

, so maybe I'll check them out and let you know how they work

.

xubuntu · Post by **xubuntu** » Thu Jul 02, 2015 6:29 am

but i think in producing you always should use only stereo.. is that correct ?

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Thu Jul 02, 2015 8:26 am

Not at all, surround sound music is becoming more widespread and easy to create, in film of course it's essential but also for creating more ambient sounds (ie sound environments). Plugins like Absynth have had surround capabilities for years.

Good 7.1 headphones?