[PCunicorn]

Okay, now I'm sure ideally you want both, but if one pair of headphones had a deep soundstage, and one had a wide soundstage, which would be better for gaming, and by how much?

And btw I meant VS, not VA

 

[PurpleAngel]

Okay, now I'm sure ideally you want both, but if one pair of headphones had a deep sound stage, and one had a wide sound stage, which would be better for gaming, and by how much?

And btw I meant VS, not VA

 
I know what a wide sound stage is.
But is there a "deep" sound stage? I've just never heard that term used before (for headphones).

 

[PCunicorn]

I've heard several people (including some pros here on Head Fi) talk about it so I would think its real.

 

[NamelessPFG]

A deep soundstage can project forward and back, not just side to side.

I'd expect that sort of thing to rely more on the virtual surround tech used. Earspeakers like the Stax Sigma and AKG K1000 would have more natural depth due to the drivers being in front of the wearer's ears, but that also inherently makes them incompatible with virtual surround and thus less suitable for gaming.

You're better off asking Mad Lust Envy what headphones pair well with virtual surround in general while fitting your desired sound signature.

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

I personally prefer a deep soundstage, because width can be aided by virtual surround to a large degree, while depth is mostly limited by the headphone's inherent sound as a whole. Deep soundstages are a specialty of planar magnetics which don't tend to extend far out in terms of width.

Case in point, the HE-400. Not the widest sounding headphone, but the depth was excellent. With virtual surround, it performed admirably in terms of positional cues due to it's great depth.

You have to remember, it's a lot harder to tell sounds coming front to back compared to side to side (which is easy even in plain stereo). So width isn't much of an issue even with the most closed headphones.