Hey there, so I was sent a trial for this, and I gotta say, I'm quite impressed with some of the presets. I'm a huge virtual surround gamer (Having used Dolby headphone devices, Creative Tru Studio, Creative SBX, Beyerdynamic Headzone, Razer Surround etc).
The OOYH software has some truly comparable presets (though I feel the default preset isn't convincing enough, so you'd have to find a better one).
Some presets are pretty lackluster, and don't seem to do 7.1 emulation well at all, and some others do them just as good as any I've heard.
There are kinks in the software (for some reason I can't easily adjust volume on the output device unless I specifically go into the sound devices and adjust the slider window, which is a huge hassle). Raising or lowering the OOYH volume utself doesn't do anything, outside of mute.
I do wish the preset trials where at least 4 hours or something. I understand it's a trial, but having to pay for a preset you can only test for 2 minutes is absurd to me. Yes, I know I can just re-toggle, but Christ, it's hard to test games if I have to alt-tab every minute or so just refresh the trial.
Also, been told this doesn't work with the Creative X7 for some reason, which is a shame. I would've liked to A-B compare the presets with SBX.
Wow, I am honored that you, @Mad Lust Envy, took the time to test and post about Out Of Your Head. I really appreciate it.
Just to address some of your issues...
The reason why the Windows volume control doesn't work with Out Of Your Head is that Out Of Your Head bypasses the Windows mixer and uses WASAPI to output to your DAC. Also, when Out Of Your Head is running, it's set at the default Windows playback device, so the Windows volume control is trying to control the Out Of Your Head virtual sound card rather than your DAC.
For DAC/amps that do not have a physical volume control, usually you can open the Windows Volume Mixer and control the volume of your DAC/amp separately. When you click on the "Device" drop down menu, you should be able to select your DAC/amp and control the volume from there.
I know it's not as easy as pressing volume up and down buttons on the keyboard, but it's a bi-product of the way we are doing the audio processing via a virtual sound card.
I realize that for gaming, a 2 minute timer is not practical. The two minute timer was designed to prevent you from listening to a whole song without interruption. It was implemented before we supported gaming. Now, with the low cost gaming version ($25), you do get a 7 day trial of the gamer preset. I realize that doesn't help if you want to evaluate all the other presets for gaming. I never thought gamers would care about all the different presets.
With regard to the Creative X7, I have had users get other Creative products working, especially USB devices. We don't have one available for testing, but if you want to try to troubleshoot it, please -email us directly and we can see why it's not working. We are working on an update that we hope will be more compatible with some problematic devices like the Asus Essence devices.
Thanks again for trying out Out Of Your Head!
-Darin