BookerDeWitt
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2016
- Posts
- 10
- Likes
- 11
Hello head-fi! Glad to have landed at your welcoming doorstep, I've been reading posts for some time before joining, I've commented on a few and I've found y'all to be knowledgeable and welcoming.
So, audiophiles endlessly pursue the best sound quality attainable on their given budget, some of us are into analogue all-the-way, some of us are into the ultimate bitrate modern digital audio, some of us are PC gamers who use the PC to process simulated surround sound which then goes to a high quality/high power amp... and so on, of course there's any combination of in-betweens, niché's, and the variables are ongoing and infinite....
I'm new to this world, I've always loved audio, but I've kind of defaulted to buying all in one solutions, from gaming headsets to home theatre systems, I was never truly satisfied but my attention has been pulled in other directions and the solutions I've found in the past worked, but now it's time to upgrade...
My gaming headset for the last 4 years has been the turtle beach px5, at the time it was turtle beach's best headset which offered footsteps, fully customisable presets, footsteps, Dolby headphone with extra footsteps, chat audio mixer with Bluetooth footsteps.......
I spend a huge amount of time customising my audio presets for NO-FOOTSTEPS. I hate footsteps and I wish to make it clear that I'm not looking for a gaming headset, I am a gamer yes, but I'm looking for a realistic surround sound cinema style experience that's honest, realistic, immersive and positional with no unnecessary accentuation of any particular frequency.
To give you an idea, I literally found surround audio clips that enabled me to modify my presets with as flat a frequency response curve as possible from 5 channels (the receiver can decode up-to Dolby 5.1), once I had that I then enabled the Dolby headphone effect, completely eliminated chat audio, and success! I managed to make the very average headset sound good, reasonably realistic and satisfactory for my requirements.
So now I'm due for an upgrade, a serious upgrade! I don't care about wireless, Bluetooth, chat, or pretty much any of the main marketed buzzwords they sling at us console gamers, I want convincing surround sound reproduction to headphones... I'm starting to become mindful of the fact this post is becoming awfully long winded so I'd best wrap it up...
I've decided on T50RP mk3 with sure 1540 pads, likely the ifi ican se but I've got no idea how to get my surround thing happening....
• I really, really want a receiver/dac/external sound card of some kind which can decode dts 5.1 over optical at bare minimum, since the PS4 can't send audio over USB, this drastically cuts down my list of options...
•I want DTS headphone x, this is by far the best surround simulation processing available...
•the best sound quality the PS4 can muster is over HDMI, such as DTS master audio, so my dream setup would be a dac which has HDMI 2.0 with hdcp 2.2 thruput... such a device does exist, it's called the Sony HW700DS, but it doesn't have DTS headphone x...
There's a lot wrong with this Sony device, I'm not convinced with the quality of the headphones, it's no goodman for music, etc... the idea is right, but the trimmings are wrong...
Other close but no cigar options are the creative sound blaster G5, this is great because I can customise the presets and it'd probably be fun, but it's not DTS headphone x, and it can only receive 5.1-7.1 as PCM via USB, over optical it can only pretend to make surround from stereo PCM...
The final, most imperfect and yet probably the most suitable option is the turtle beach tactical elite controller, it has DTS headphone x, it uses a 5.1 source signal but only over optical which I believe is Dolby 5.1, has different presets but I'm not sure how customisable they are which will probably be a problem when trying to get this setup to sound good with T50rp's....
So to sumarise, I want...
•DTS 5.1 decoding at a minimum
•some kind of preset adjustability, because fine tuning will surely be necessary
•DTS headphone x
•post-processed signal to stereo line-out
•if possible HDMI 2.0 with HDCP 2.2 thruput
Kinda sounds like I'm describing a home theatre reviewer, of some kind of av preamp.... but the av receivers I've seen have questionable line-outs and/or headphone out....
See my problem? Severe OCD mainly... not your typical "console gamer"....
Thanks to any and all who stayed with me for the duration of my life story haha
PS/EDIT: I'm aware that in a perfect world, all I'd need is to select "headphone" mode in he game menu, output normal stereo PCM and bobs ur uncle, the headphones reproduce perfect "simulated 3D" sound... I understand, I've listened to the barbershop 3D sound demo, I listen to binaural audio for meditation and enjoyment so I know that in a perfect world I'd have no need for simulated 3D audio.... but that works on PC, unfortunately it does not work on PlayStation, 80% of games don't have a "headphone " mode.
Extra unfortunately, if you just output all audio as stereo on the PlayStation all channels are literally just squashed down to stereo, there's nothing remotely surround about it, it is nothing like gaming on a PC in stereo. There are very few games that actually even have a headphone option... anyway, rambling again, just wanted to clarify, I'd prefer to avoid this dac/receiver dilemma, but since I'm a console gamer looking for good quality binaural or head-related transfer function simulation... that means external, it means delay headphone (begrudgingly) or DTS headphone x (preferably)...
So, audiophiles endlessly pursue the best sound quality attainable on their given budget, some of us are into analogue all-the-way, some of us are into the ultimate bitrate modern digital audio, some of us are PC gamers who use the PC to process simulated surround sound which then goes to a high quality/high power amp... and so on, of course there's any combination of in-betweens, niché's, and the variables are ongoing and infinite....
I'm new to this world, I've always loved audio, but I've kind of defaulted to buying all in one solutions, from gaming headsets to home theatre systems, I was never truly satisfied but my attention has been pulled in other directions and the solutions I've found in the past worked, but now it's time to upgrade...
My gaming headset for the last 4 years has been the turtle beach px5, at the time it was turtle beach's best headset which offered footsteps, fully customisable presets, footsteps, Dolby headphone with extra footsteps, chat audio mixer with Bluetooth footsteps.......
I spend a huge amount of time customising my audio presets for NO-FOOTSTEPS. I hate footsteps and I wish to make it clear that I'm not looking for a gaming headset, I am a gamer yes, but I'm looking for a realistic surround sound cinema style experience that's honest, realistic, immersive and positional with no unnecessary accentuation of any particular frequency.
To give you an idea, I literally found surround audio clips that enabled me to modify my presets with as flat a frequency response curve as possible from 5 channels (the receiver can decode up-to Dolby 5.1), once I had that I then enabled the Dolby headphone effect, completely eliminated chat audio, and success! I managed to make the very average headset sound good, reasonably realistic and satisfactory for my requirements.
So now I'm due for an upgrade, a serious upgrade! I don't care about wireless, Bluetooth, chat, or pretty much any of the main marketed buzzwords they sling at us console gamers, I want convincing surround sound reproduction to headphones... I'm starting to become mindful of the fact this post is becoming awfully long winded so I'd best wrap it up...
I've decided on T50RP mk3 with sure 1540 pads, likely the ifi ican se but I've got no idea how to get my surround thing happening....
• I really, really want a receiver/dac/external sound card of some kind which can decode dts 5.1 over optical at bare minimum, since the PS4 can't send audio over USB, this drastically cuts down my list of options...
•I want DTS headphone x, this is by far the best surround simulation processing available...
•the best sound quality the PS4 can muster is over HDMI, such as DTS master audio, so my dream setup would be a dac which has HDMI 2.0 with hdcp 2.2 thruput... such a device does exist, it's called the Sony HW700DS, but it doesn't have DTS headphone x...
There's a lot wrong with this Sony device, I'm not convinced with the quality of the headphones, it's no goodman for music, etc... the idea is right, but the trimmings are wrong...
Other close but no cigar options are the creative sound blaster G5, this is great because I can customise the presets and it'd probably be fun, but it's not DTS headphone x, and it can only receive 5.1-7.1 as PCM via USB, over optical it can only pretend to make surround from stereo PCM...
The final, most imperfect and yet probably the most suitable option is the turtle beach tactical elite controller, it has DTS headphone x, it uses a 5.1 source signal but only over optical which I believe is Dolby 5.1, has different presets but I'm not sure how customisable they are which will probably be a problem when trying to get this setup to sound good with T50rp's....
So to sumarise, I want...
•DTS 5.1 decoding at a minimum
•some kind of preset adjustability, because fine tuning will surely be necessary
•DTS headphone x
•post-processed signal to stereo line-out
•if possible HDMI 2.0 with HDCP 2.2 thruput
Kinda sounds like I'm describing a home theatre reviewer, of some kind of av preamp.... but the av receivers I've seen have questionable line-outs and/or headphone out....
See my problem? Severe OCD mainly... not your typical "console gamer"....
Thanks to any and all who stayed with me for the duration of my life story haha
PS/EDIT: I'm aware that in a perfect world, all I'd need is to select "headphone" mode in he game menu, output normal stereo PCM and bobs ur uncle, the headphones reproduce perfect "simulated 3D" sound... I understand, I've listened to the barbershop 3D sound demo, I listen to binaural audio for meditation and enjoyment so I know that in a perfect world I'd have no need for simulated 3D audio.... but that works on PC, unfortunately it does not work on PlayStation, 80% of games don't have a "headphone " mode.
Extra unfortunately, if you just output all audio as stereo on the PlayStation all channels are literally just squashed down to stereo, there's nothing remotely surround about it, it is nothing like gaming on a PC in stereo. There are very few games that actually even have a headphone option... anyway, rambling again, just wanted to clarify, I'd prefer to avoid this dac/receiver dilemma, but since I'm a console gamer looking for good quality binaural or head-related transfer function simulation... that means external, it means delay headphone (begrudgingly) or DTS headphone x (preferably)...
