[burritoboy9984]

Dunno if you still have the mixamp or not, but you could put one speaker from your current 2.0 setup on each side of you, and use the mixamp for dolby headphone, lol. I did this with my Def Tech HTIB Sats (for S&G's) and was pleasantly surprised with how well it worked. Of course it wasn't good enough to replace the 5.1 setup or the Mixamp + Headphones, but it was pretty ok for gaming the little bit I tried it.
 
 
 
-Erik

 

[Rebel975]

Dude, I gave you my old mixamp. 

 

[burritoboy9984]

Dude, I gave you my old mixamp. :blink:

Dang dude, I assumed you replaced it with something when you were giving it away, my bad. Well I can say it is being put to good use, lol.

-Erik

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

Lol, the only problem I see with the DH speaker method is that your other ear is also hearing sounds meant for one ear only (hence the headphone processing). I have tested the speaker method and it does work, but I feel it's still not optimal, obviously.

 

[Rebel975]

Quote:

Dang dude, I assumed you replaced it with something when you were giving it away, my bad. Well I can say it is being put to good use, lol.
-Erik

 
 
Sorry, I thought you had forgotten about me or something. My bad.
 
Anyway- You could say I replaced it with a UMC-1 and UPA-500.

 
I get great left/right separation and "alright" front/back separation with my current setup. I'm dieing to add a center and rear speakers, but I'll need ~$1,000 to do it properly. Maybe I should just buy some crappy rears/center until I can afford nice ones?

 

[burritoboy9984]

Quote:

 
 
Sorry, I thought you had forgotten about me or something. My bad.
 
Anyway- You could say I replaced it with a UMC-1 and UPA-500.

 
I get great left/right separation and "alright" front/back separation with my current setup. I'm dieing to add a center and rear speakers, but I'll need ~$1,000 to do it properly. Maybe I should just buy some crappy rears/center until I can afford nice ones?

 
You can get away with crappy rears, you should try and semi match the center though probably...
 
-Erik

 

[smellyfungus]

I believe 50% of sound (mainly dialogue) come from the center in a 5.1. so if you're using the setup for movies too then I wouldn't skimp on the center speaker.
I do agree you can skimp on the rears, you'll only notice them in blurays. for games good ones don't enhance much.

 

[Rebel975]

I only play games on this setup.

 

[seb UK]

Quote:

I only play games on this setup.

Do you remember the centre speaker on the z5500 being a bit weak? I often couldn't hear dialogue in games that well...I thought it was the only weak spot in the whole package. So if you are into RPGs etc a centre speaker should be a good investment?

How do you compare your new system to the z5500?

 

[Rebel975]

I couldn't give a good comparison. I haven't had the z5500 for years. I do remember turning down every channel except for the center at times. Though, I also remember the entire package being awesome. It was my first 'real' set of speakers.

 

[hamzatm]

I realise this is 8 years old, but I wanted to check in on how you’re finding gaming with desktop speakers nowadays - if you still do it

(Basically I’ve recently bought a 5.1 set of Tannoys and have been setting them up around my room, but I don’t think I’m quite there yet for PC games. Been trying to find
people who’ve been through something similar)

 

[halcyon]

For 3D gaming sound positional accuracy, even small skimpy 5.1 real speakers (positioned/calibrated correctly) offered to me always better positional cues (less confusion, more accurate) that any of the 3D virtualized headphone systems I've tried.

What you gain in positional accuracy, you lose in sound quality (unless you have a decent room acoustics and $$$$ to spend on speakers).

 

[hamzatm]

For 3D gaming sound positional accuracy, even small skimpy 5.1 real speakers (positioned/calibrated correctly) offered to me always better positional cues (less confusion, more accurate) that any of the 3D virtualized headphone systems I've tried.

What you gain in positional accuracy, you lose in sound quality (unless you have a decent room acoustics and $$$$ to spend on speakers).

So what I'm after is 3D gaming sound positional accuracy and also sound quality. I do have the $$$ to spend on speakers (or more accurately, I found a really old but very decent 5.1 setup for very cheap - which I hope counts ), but what I don't know about are room acoustics and positioning/calibration. Do you know how I can go about setting these speakers up properly?

 

[halcyon]

So what I'm after is 3D gaming sound positional accuracy and also sound quality. I do have the $$$ to spend on speakers (or more accurately, I found a really old but very decent 5.1 setup for very cheap - which I hope counts ), but what I don't know about are room acoustics and positioning/calibration. Do you know how I can go about setting these speakers up properly?

Well, if you have a lot to spend, why not get a 5.1 active speaker setup? Yes, you will have to tangle with cables, loudspeaker stands (for rear speakers) and powering all speakers, but you will get sound quality that will blow away most headphone setups.

Your price range is anything from c. $350/USD per loudspeaker (5 times that for 5 speakers + additional cost for the subwoofer) up to thousands per loudspeaker.

I would personally stay in uniform directionally loudspeaker designs with modern waveguides like Genelec, Focal, Neumann (ex-Klein&Hummel), Aurelia, etc. Most of them can be placed quite freely in near- to mid-field (not too far away from you as a listener), are not quite as bad in non-acoustically treated rooms as non-uniform directional speakers are, and usually have filters to compensate for bass & high frequency roll-off, so you can better fit them to your room acoustics.

Granted, this is more cumbersome and more costly alternative, but you the sound quality will be amazing, and the positional 3D accuracy par none.

If you want to stay in the sub $1000 USD range (roughly) you are probably better off buying a pre-configure 5.1 loudspeaker set (there are way too many to mention).

If you just want to spend say $300ish on the whole setup, then finding a used setup (proper loudspeakers, not a Logitech gaming setup) would probably be your best bett.

 

[hamzatm]

Curious, what's the benefit of going for active speakers over passive? I thought passive was the way to go because they do everything active does except they also let you choose your own amp/dac/etc., is that not the case?