Gaming headphones for 100$ (for surround) - Page 5

Dolby Headphone works GREAT for games. If you would have read my previous posts, you would have seen my thoughts on Dolby Headphones and games.

The first generation Promedias (like my 4.1s that are in another hemisphere at the moment) were heavy on the bass. They were/are still pretty good, since that bass was well defined and reasonably fast. When they came out with the 2.1s (and the 5.1s), they adjusted the crossover and so they produce a more balanced sound. (They also fixed the preamp which had a "scratchy" volume nob, adding a reasonably clean headphone jack in the process).

The 2.1 solution they offer below the Promedias is for the Xbox and looks like it. They also make an iPod accessory system (but in the price you pay is the fee for being an "official iPod accessory").

So, at least a few years ago, the Promedia series was among the best in terms of price/performance. They were better than most PC speakers for movies and music too.

What should you look for in gaming speakers? Well, what kinds of games do you play? Games use a lot of bass for environmental sounds (low distorted humming noises), and if you play those, you'll probably want a system that can cleanly and clearly reproduce those frequencies. (Most cheap subs just make a lot of noise and impress males by agitating those parts most vulnerable to vibration, in the process releasing testosterone into the bloodstream. It's a clinical fact. I swear.). When you move from cheap speakers to a semidecent setup, the first thing you'll notice is that all your games have cool definition on the lower frequencies. But the mids and highs are where you get the sense of space and directionality. If these are clear, and fast, then in a complicated environment, such as a firefight, you should be able to pick out spatially the myriad of sounds coming at once ("PK over to the left and distant, M4A1 to my right-rear, footsteps above me...")

In other words, listen to the environment being reproduced, and not the sound.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought shielded speakers mattered when you dealt a lot with magnetic media (like floppy disks) and CRTs.

Hmm, I would say, if you're gonna go speakers (as opposed to headphones), $100 would get you something very mediocre at best. Insignia is the in-house Best Buy brand, and I wouldn't touch it. One of their photo frame models came with a virus recently. OK, since they outsource, it's not the same manufacturer as the speakers, but it'll tell you something, that Best Buy will get the cheapest, to sell at a significant markup, and it'll still be kinda cheap. I'd get something from original manufacturers. I'm sure you could get a Promedia 2.1 or JBL bookshelf speakers for about the same price as Insignia.

for games dolby headphone means nothing. positional audio from via, realtek, and cmedia chips is very weak in comparison to an x-fi. for serious gaming audio u need an x-fi. some games- like ut3 and bf2142- sound like garbage with anything but an x-fi.
i have owned many headphones including a few 5.1 sets- an x-fi and quality regular headphones is fantastic for games. keep in mind also that an x-fi puts out more power than most soundcards and will power headphones 150 ohms and under. my dt770's will literally vibrate with the bass it gets from the x-fi

From this post I don't think you really understand what Dolby Headphone is and does. It is not a VIA, Realtek or C-media thing, though some of their cards offer it. True, those companies offer their own positional audio stuff, and at least Realtek's and C-media's are crap, but DH is completely independent of which manufacturer makes the chip. It's pretty much a software feature. I don't know why only some same chipsets offer it across different brands, maybe the chipsets are optimized for it, but it doesn't depend on the chipset itself. Anyway, as long as the game can put out 5.1-channel audio to your speakers, DH in the card driver should be able to handle it as well as a movie or anything else (which means great).

I hear good things about the CMSS-3d Headphone thing (which is probably what you meant as X-Fi), but what I've tried (the CMSS-3D Headphone stereo-to-surround-to-headphone implementation) sounded like crap, like the other chipset manufacturer's more or less. I'd like to try the 5.1 surround-to-headphone implementation of CMSS-3D Headphone, though, but so far, no gimmick of Creative Labs has impressed me at all (including the X-Fi "enhancer" stuff. Dolby has been very effective with DPLII and DH.

I did read the review, but I am also always very suspicious of very favorable reviews that compare super cheap stuff to multi-thousand-dollar equipment. Seems almost too good to be true. I don't know, I may be wrong, but I think there's a good chance that you'd get better performance out of some tried-and-true brand. It's just my opinion from experience though. I very well could be wrong. I haven't tried the speakers myself. I just last year got a good deal with a pair of Definitive Tech StudioMonitor 350's which are pretty low-midrange for that brand, and they're the best speakers I've ever owned (I never spent much money on speakers, but I've had JBL monitors and Klipsch Promedias). The difference with quality brands is very noticeable.

for games only an x-fi is the best. not to be a fanboy but i've tried the others- creative labs has bought up the best 3d sound software companis- emu, aureal, sensaura. very few games have native dolby support coming out and 5.1 sound would just through directsound3d. if your game supports this u will always get a 3d headphones hrtf effect. this is nothing compared to what an x-fi or even an audigy gives. also the x-fi gives above and below sound, eax effects, and hardware acceleration. again this is for games only. for movies i cant say

Dolby Headphone does not need native Dolby support at all, it just needs 5.1 channels of sound being fed to it. But from what I understand from your post, many or most games don't even offer 5.1 surround to a 5.1 speaker setup? You can only use effects like CMSS-3D or whatever your game supports? If so, that's pretty lame, I would have thought that PC games by now would do discrete 5.1 over speakers easily. Even the Gamecube and later PS2 games had Dolby Prologic II support, which worked especially well with FPS games (not that I'm a fan of those, but I played Metroid for a while), and would have had some sort of discrete digital 5.1 surround if their power/specs allowed it.

many games offer 3d sound support- but its up to the drivers of the soundcard or native game software to split it into 5 or more channels. many games also support creative labs' standards.
i dont know if just outputting directsound3d streams would let dolby take it from there and convert it into hrtf headphone functions. i havent heard of it being done that way and i've always been a fan of 3d gaming audio. the old unreal engine games supported dolby (and eax and A3d)but thats all i can think of
as creative labs takes a dump games might start supporting dolby but for now its an creative labs stranglehold

It might be that it's because most cards don't offer Dolby Headphone, and no Creative card offers it. I specifically looked for it. Dolby has done a horrible job of promoting it. I only hope DTS does better with its new competing technology. DH has only survived due to how effective it is. All the people who I've read mentioning it or trying it one way or the other love it. To me, it's indispensable to movie-watching.

I even use it on my ipod, with the JVC SU-DH1 adapter. Pity no other major brand has come out with a quality DH adapter. And curiously, a couple of years back maybe, Creative had a pair of headphones that included DH with a separate adapter that worked very similarly to the JVC one, but now it seems since they have CMSS-3D and other competing technologies they don't offer anything Dolby. Do they even offer Dolby Digital Live, or DTS Connect, for that matter? I know they have a separate DTS converter that takes 5.1 analog and converts it to DTS via S/PDIF, but DTS connect does that inside the PC and it's much more convenient, not to mention the unneeded D/A/D step that the sound goes through with the adapter.

And about the games, I'm almost completely sure that if you can output 5.1 channels to 5.1 speakers, you can use DH, no matter where the sound path is coming from. DH should be one of the last steps in processing, it would work similarly to the card's EQ (i.e. it will work for all sound).