AD700 + Soundcard? COD4 Gaming - Page 3

I'm saying you can try dolby headphone because a lot of gamers like it and you might like it as well but if you don't like it then the sound card will still be better than onboard. So no matter what you will get better sound.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PurpleAngel 

All the Xonar cards will be about the same for headphone gaming (DG, DX, D1, STX, ST).

The STX & ST have the best headphone sound (dedicated headphone amplifier and upgradable op-amps).

 

I would guess the best "gaming" card made is the Creative Labs Titanium HD.

That's how it seems to stand at the moment, though do note that the Titanium HD also has upgradable OPAMPs.

If anything, the biggest differences seem to be the dedicated dynamic/ortho headphone amp and C-Media chipset on the Xonar Essence, the former of which apparently performs much better than your typical $30-50 headphone amp (usual price difference between Titanium HD and Essence STX). There may be differences in overall sound signature (some say the Titanium HD skews more toward "warm"), but I'd have to sample both cards to find out for myself.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 443330 

Ok, fair enough.

I have another question. I have used Logitech G35's before but found they sounded like muddled when the surround sound option in the drivers was turned on, I also found the sound was clearer if in game I use stereo as my setting.

Now to my understanding G35's have dolby headphones built in right? So me disabling the surround sound option would have been disabling Dolby headphones?

Yes, the G35 uses Dolby Headphone. There's a chance that you may not actually like the effect; some people do game purely with stereo. I actually don't like such effects when listening to music, but for gaming, it's imperative that I know where sounds are coming from, and it's much easier with binaural surround filters like that.

Also note that the G35 itself may be holding things back compared to something like an AD700.

Note that I never have used the G35. I wouldn't buy a headset like that.

My impressions with Dolby Headphone come from a JVC/Victor SU-DH1 DAC/DSP (a predecessor to the Astro Mixamp and Turtle Beach Ear Force DSS), fed by my X-Fi Titanium HD over S/PDIF with Dolby Digital Live, when I'm not using it with my original Xbox instead.

I would've tested the AD700 with it, but I already sold it a few months ago.

There's a chance it could be how CoD4 mixes the sounds. Some games just have better positional audio than others. (Too bad the industry seems to have regressed in that department...)

Also remember that I don't own CoD4 and only have that pre-release singleplayer demo to go by. There might be some changes with the final, full release.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 443330 
I have another question. I have used Logitech G35's before but found they sounded like muddled when the surround sound option in the drivers was turned on, I also found the sound was clearer if in game I use stereo as my setting.

Now to my understanding G35's have dolby headphones built in right? So me disabling the surround sound option would have been disabling Dolby headphones?

In the Windows control panel, in the sound, in configure, in speaker setup, is it set for stereo or 5.1?

I'm wondering if you set it for 5.1, it might(?) help for surround sound?
 

In games with software audio engines like CoD4, they tend to look at the Windows sound setting to decide how the sounds should be pre-mixed.

If it says 5.1, then Dolby Headphone, CMSS-3D Headphone, and so forth would actually have some rear channels to work with. If it says stereo...left-to-right panning is all you get.

Some games actually do have an in-game setting for speaker configurations; I just put it at 5.1 or 7.1 to be safe. (With my use of X-Fi cards, it shouldn't really matter anyway with the way CMSS-3D Headphone works if they use DirectSound3D or OpenAL, but I can't be as sure about C-Media-based cards and DH.)

Quote:

Originally Posted by 443330 
When I had the G35's I tried many different configurations until I was happy, I can't exactly remember if I had it on stereo headset or 5.1 though.

How exactly does the windows settings influence the sound?

I believe that Dolby Headphone (5.1) is taking a 5.1 signal and mixing it into virtual 5.1 for 2.0 channel headphones.

I guessing when you feed a 2.0 signal into a Dolby device telling it make a virtual 5.1 signal, the Dolby gets weird.