[Hunched]

Just thought I'd update that the new Sennheiser 7.1 amps have appeared on Mwave with an ETA of a Sept 21st release date.
Please give us something at least as good as SBX, because everything but SBX is pretty much garbage, we need some competition.
 
I'm still waiting on a YouTube video or something to showcase what their new tech sounds like. 

 

[rudyae86]

  Just thought I'd update that the new Sennheiser 7.1 amps have appeared on Mwave with an ETA of a Sept 21st release date.
Please give us something at least as good as SBX, because everything but SBX is pretty much garbage, we need some competition.
 
I'm still waiting on a YouTube video or something to showcase what their new tech sounds like. 

I might actually purchase one if Amazon has it for sale when it comes out....or I might wait until BF since by then I will have some spare change.
 
As a PC gamer, I'm actually excited about the new Sennheiser's new products...

 

[Hunched]

So Sennheiser has put up a video, but it's basically just an advert.
Nothing that useful, if that was supposed to showcase the 7.1 and sell me on it the video failed.

 
If this is all they're releasing for the GSX amps I'm disappointed, hopefully someone will upload a proper showcase or comparison of Sennheiser's 7.1 compared to SBX or whatever else sometime soon.
 
Hopefully their marketing team is just bad and the product will still be good.
The intense advertising music is louder than the stereo to 7.1 comparison they're attempting to make you hear...
 
Can something not suck for once? I'm tired of being disappointed in nearly everything I own somehow.

 

[BlueNinja0]

Nice promotional video, but unfortunately there is no surround demonstration indeed. Maybe they'll upload a separate video for it later.

 

[Diji1]

Hi guys I just wanted to get a thumbs up on this arrangement for PC gaming with 3D audio to avoid any silly mistakes:
 
Headphone: Philips Fidelio X2 (with new shielded cord as per review on MLE gaming headphone thread)
 
Soundcard: Creative X-Fi Titanium HD
 
Amp: onboard Creative X-Fi Titanium HD
 
Can anyone see any problems here?

 

[Hunched]

  Nice promotional video, but unfortunately there is no surround demonstration indeed. Maybe they'll upload a separate video for it later.

They clearly tried to demonstrate the difference between stereo sound and their surround sound, just failed miserably with the video.
 
It straight up says "Stereo Audio" and then "7.1 Sennheiser Binaural Rendering Engine"
There's definitely a sound difference, the little shooting pixel enemy things or whatever sound further away with the "7.1"
 
I don't think they actually bothered to record their 7.1 properly though, it's like they just poorly edited some 2 channel stereo to try and make it sound more spacious or something. 
 
No idea what they were thinking, the video is bad. Blasting intense advertising music during the sound comparison is also stupid.
 
So I doubt we'll get anything more, seeing as the Sennheiser marketing team thinks they've put a comparison out there.
This video just makes them look bad, and it won't make sense if they put out another proper comparison that sounds completely different from this one because it was done properly.
I don't know
 
This is the only place they've put this video as well... Their official Polish channel, with a whole 227 subscribers.
They have bigger official channels. Makes no sense.

 

[rudyae86]

During the video, when they mention front and back speakers.....it did notice that the rear speakers stand out more than what SBX or DH reveal in terms of rear speakers. But yeah, the video was not done very properly. It does scream gamer and added that music to give it that "wow" factor for the gamers out there.
 
Lets hope it delivers more than what the video has showed us....
 
at least it doesn't sound like the Turtle Beach TAC.....like a tin can and all lol

 

[BlueNinja0]

Headphone: Philips Fidelio X2 (with new shielded cord as per review on MLE gaming headphone thread)

 
What do you mean by "new shielded cord"?
 
Anyway, I have the X2 and I can say I love everything about them, well... maybe with the exception of the leaking ink thing, but that's solved for me.
 
 
 

I don't think they actually bothered to record their 7.1 properly though, it's like they just poorly edited some 2 channel stereo to try and make it sound more spacious or something. 

 
I don't think they were trying to make an audio comparison on that video at all. The demonstration with the little top view over a map's point was to kinda explain to the audience what benefits there is to having surround sound in games. I highly doubt the audio was captured on their new DACs at all. The video was probably outsourced to some publicity agency. I wouldn't take that sound into consideration.

 

[Diji1]

   
What do you mean by "new shielded cord"?
 

 
Just a cord that doesn't pick up any electrical noise is what i meant by shielded.  The review on MLE's gaming headphone reviews thread suggests the supplied cord is a little detrimental to the sound is all.

 

[rudyae86]

   
Just a cord that doesn't pick up any electrical noise is what i meant by shielded.  The review on MLE's gaming headphone reviews thread suggests the supplied cord is a little detrimental to the sound is all.

No, I think you have a bit wrong. The X1's cable had a high impedance which in some way, kind of held back the X1 from delivering its complete sound signature (just saying it in easy words), so he suggested to use a different cable that didnt result from high impedance. The X2 cable is actually better than the stock X1 cable....
 
You might have read the wrong review for the wrong headphone....
 
or I could have read wrong lol

 

[Diji1]

Actually you are 100% correct I confused reviews between X1 and X2 - thanks guys.
 
So I have X-Fi Titanium HD and Fidelio X2 now but I've only used them for The Rise Of The Tombraider - surround seems to be working brilliantly as in positioning of enemies is very easy to pinpoint using audio (although I might try closing my eyes next time I play and try positioning them correctly without visual clues if possible).
 
Windows Speakers control panel allows me to choose 5.1 speakers and the test appears to be positioning the speakers correctly.  Am I correct in assuming that the reason I do not have 7.1 here is that I'm using CMSS-3D and not Dolby Headphone (but the 7.1 is virtual only for DH in any case if i had DH hardware)?
 
However I haven't been able to test my setup to my satisfaction: Rightmark 3DSound only shows "DirectSound 3D" as an option in the system menu (everything else is greyed out) and the test where you can move the sound around the head seems to be only stereo to me and doesn't give convincing surround effect at all for front and rear positioning.  Only the right most slider works which I'm assuming is meant to be moving sound up and down in height and that appears to be stereo/not working.
 
Is Rightmark 3DSound just too old to test this stuff correctly and could you recommend another similar application?  Possibly I have something wrong in my setup but like I said surround in games appears to be working very well so far so I'm not sure.
 
Finally: I would like to have a subwoofer and headphone surround effects: one way to do this with *stereo* audio is
splitting the audio from the 3.5mm jack and running it to another amp then headphones so headphones and sub have seperate volume levels.
 
X-Fi Titanium HD -> splitter -> amp -> headphones
                               |
                               V
                    powered subwoofer
 
Will this destroy the surround effect? Or is there another way of achieving this?
 
Also found this which some may find useful: http://satsun.org/audio/  up to date (but going back to the 80's ) list of PC games and surround sound API used.

 

[PurpleAngel]

  Actually you are 100% correct I confused reviews between X1 and X2 - thanks guys.
So I have X-Fi Titanium HD and Fidelio X2 now but I've only used them for The Rise Of The Tombraider - surround seems to be working brilliantly as in positioning of enemies is very easy to pinpoint using audio (although I might try closing my eyes next time I play and try positioning them correctly without visual clues if possible).
Windows Speakers control panel allows me to choose 5.1 speakers and the test appears to be positioning the speakers correctly.  Am I correct in assuming that the reason I do not have 7.1 here is that I'm using CMSS-3D and not Dolby Headphone (but the 7.1 is virtual only for DH in any case if i had DH hardware)?
However I haven't been able to test my setup to my satisfaction: Rightmark 3DSound only shows "DirectSound 3D" as an option in the system menu (everything else is greyed out) and the test where you can move the sound around the head seems to be only stereo to me and doesn't give convincing surround effect at all for front and rear positioning.  Only the right most slider works which I'm assuming is meant to be moving sound up and down in height and that appears to be stereo/not working.
Is Rightmark 3DSound just too old to test this stuff correctly and could you recommend another similar application?  Possibly I have something wrong in my setup but like I said surround in games appears to be working very well so far so I'm not sure.
Finally: I would like to have a sub-woofer and headphone surround effects: one way to do this with *stereo* audio is
splitting the audio from the 3.5mm jack and running it to another amp then headphones so headphones and sub have seperate volume levels.
Will this destroy the surround effect? Or is there another way of achieving this?
Also found this which some may find useful: http://satsun.org/audio/  up to date (but going back to the 80's ) list of PC games and surround sound API used.

 
Hopefully you disabled the motherboard's on-board audio, in the BIOS, when you installed the Ti-HD (Titanium-HD) sound card.
There is a small chance that active on-board audio might effect an add-on internal sound card (small chance).
 
You could run an analog audio signal, from the Ti-HD's line-output (RCA) jacks, into a sub-woofer's line-input.
Then connect an external headphone amplifier, to the sub-woofer's line-output.
But I'm guessing you only going to get a crude audio thump, from the sub-woofer.
 
For improving over all audio quality, you might consider connecting an external headphone amplifier directly up to the Ti-HD's RCA line-output jacks.
The Ti-HD's headphone jack is decent, but has a 35-Ohm output impedance.
And with the 30-Ohm Philips Fidelio X2 headphones, a headphone amplifier with an output impedance of around 4-Ohms or less, would be recommended, for best audio detail.
There are lots of external headphone amplifiers that have an output impedance of less then 4-Ohms.
 
The Ti-HD's headphone uses two of the Ti-HD's dual channel op-amps, While the Ti-HD's line-output takes advantage of the Ti-HD's two dual channel op-amps and two single channel op-amps (cleaner audio).
And the Ti-HD can send it's CMSS-3D headphone audio out the RCA line-output jacks

 

[Diji1]

   
Hopefully you disabled the motherboard's on-board audio, in the BIOS, when you installed the Ti-HD (Titanium-HD) sound card.
There is a small chance that active on-board audio might effect an add-on internal sound card (small chance).
 
You could run an analog audio signal, from the Ti-HD's line-output (RCA) jacks, into a sub-woofer's line-input.
Then connect an external headphone amplifier, to the sub-woofer's line-output.
But I'm guessing you only going to get a crude audio thump, from the sub-woofer.
 
For improving over all audio quality, you might consider connecting an external headphone amplifier directly up to the Ti-HD's RCA line-output jacks.
The Ti-HD's headphone jack is decent, but has a 35-Ohm output impedance.
And with the 30-Ohm Philips Fidelio X2 headphones, a headphone amplifier with an output impedance of around 4-Ohms or less, would be recommended, for best audio detail.
There are lots of external headphone amplifiers that have an output impedance of less then 4-Ohms.
 
The Ti-HD's headphone uses two of the Ti-HD's dual channel op-amps, While the Ti-HD's line-output takes advantage of the Ti-HD's two dual channel op-amps and two single channel op-amps (cleaner audio).
And the Ti-HD can send it's CMSS-3D headphone audio out the RCA line-output jacks

 
I thought the whole point of a line out is that it avoided the devices amps entirely so I'm confused.

 

[PurpleAngel]

   
I thought the whole point of a line out is that it avoided the devices amps entirely so I'm confused.

 
Ti-HD headphone jack uses the two I/V dual channel (JCR2114) op-amps.
And the Ti-HD's line-output uses these two I/V slotted op-amps, plus the two single channel LME49710 op-amps.
 
I believe it's fairly common to have op-amps located somewhere after the audio signal goes thru the DAC.
(but I'm not the expert).

 

[yoboseyo]

I'm looking to run a setup of using Stereo Mix to output my sound card to ODAC (USB). I have a few questions just for confirmation I'm doing the right thing.
 
The OP only mentions this method using  "What u hear" (Creative) - I'm guessing Stereo Mix (Xonar) is exactly the same?
 
How's the performance? Is it bit-perfect? Is there any noticeable delay?
 
I heard there's some stereo mix issues with USB headsets. Would ODAC have the same issue?
 
Cheers!