Hmm, good point.

The SBX I have is some sort of equaliser. It's some rubbish that Creative bundle.e It's all just turn on turn off, you may as well try it and see. The spatialisation necessarily transforms the sound wave a fait bit, I don't think they are provided for 'audiophiles'. I think they are more for...

I think this tech presentation will have the answer (Introducing Spatial Audio Capabilities for Xbox and Windows). I haven't watched it. https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GDC/GDC-2017/GDC2017-002

Oh, ok. I am pretty sure the '7,1 virtual surround' isn't parsing a 7.1 source and is just a bit of a fancy name for processing the signal. You can setup HRTF on system shock, thief, doom etc, and it sounds similar to that. I don't know much about it, but I guess once the stereo signal is...

There's no placebo, it provides excellent positioning and soundstage. It's probably an HRTF solution of some sort. I have no idea how they implement it for a stereo feed, outside of games that provide positional information. It's good but. They stopped caring about sound for a few years there...

Turns out the thing doesn't detect the headphones properly if you boot up with them in. Go figure.

Sonic works very well and it sounds like some sort of hrtf solution. I wonder why they have started making serious effort to sound positioning after ignoring for many years. However, with 16 bit audio selected, there is a noticeable hiss present in my headphones, absent with 24 bit. Surely this...