Computer 5.1/7.1 Wireless Gaming Headsets, suggestions?

[CAMAROBOY69]

In follow up to my previous relpies about looking for a headset. They didnt have the one in stock that you mentioned so we started with a turtle beach headset that was supposed to link to the PS3, 360, and PC $150.00. After messing around with it for about 30 minutes finally got it to sink up to the PS3. The in game audio worked but the mic audio never would turn on. So we gave up and brought that back. Decided we really dont need a headset that does everything. So she ended up just getting a cheap wired Turtle beach specifically for the PS3 for $60.00. She will just have a headset for the PS3 and the 360. Shes not as picky as I am so it actually worked out nicely.

While we were at Best Buy I also bought her a new 22" Samsung LED tv to replace the 19" LCD Monitor she was using. The old monitor didnt have HDMI and hooking the PS3 to her monitor using VGA or DVI was going to be a pain in the butt so we just figured it was time for an upgrade to make it easier to hook up the PS3. HDMI direct plug in was much easier.

 

[Pako]

Right on! Well, using the mixamp system would be a bit cumbersome switching between systems without an optical switch to do the routing for you. In any case, glad you found a solution for her.

 

[Pako]

Well, the saga continues.

Last night I installed my new Asus Xonar Essence STX sound card. Some install info here.

It's a good card with a decent headphone amp built into it. When running headphones direct from the card, you can select 3 different impedance settings, < 68 ohms, 68-300 ohms, and 300-600 ohms. I tried two different phones last night. My Sony MDR-7506 63 Ohm and my AKG K240 DF II 600 Ohm headphones. The Sony's sounded like they always have and was not expecting anything new there. What really surprised me was the AKG's seem to come to life. I have never heard these phones sound so good. It tells me I have always been driving them with the wrong impedance due to lack of proper equipment. I found myself staying up waaaaay too late last night listening to different lossless files at 24-bit, 96k vinyl transfers. It was amazing. The sound staging and presence was impressive, very impressive. It brought a whole new life to my old AKG's. Now I am REALLY excited to get my Sennheiser's which are not back ordered until the 11th according the email I just got.

The downside to this sound card, and something I still need to work though is the SPDIF out. I had lots of issues with digital drops, lack of audio, lack of 24bit/192k support as advertised. I could only get it to work through my mixamp 5.8 at 24bit, 44.1k/48k rates. The other thing I noticed was the surround button on the mixamp had zero effect. I also discovered that the SPDIF is pre-EVERYTHING. The driver's eq, DSP, Balance, etc have absolutely no effect on the SPDIF signal. The only thing that was effected from the driver was the volume. All other settings had zero effect. I will try some different optical cables tonight to see if I can stabilize the signal. In some of my reading, I did discover that I needed to turn all Dolby Digital effects off, to just send the stereo SPDIF signal to the Mixamp and let the Mixamp to the encoding. I will try that tonight and report back, but first I need to get the digital PCM via TOSLink signal to quit dropping and popping on me.

[Edit] Worked through the S/PDIF situation last night and have come to the conclusion that the Mixamp 5.8 cannot accept any signal greater than 24-bit/48k. I also discovered that my audio card can up-mix stereo to Dolby Digital 5.1, Headphone, and DD Virtual Speaker but not of this encoding is passed through the S/PDIF. What this means is that the source material must be encoded Dolby Digital first for it to be processed on the Mixamp 5.8 as such. I did test a couple A/52 over S/PDIF which sounded pretty good, but again, limited to the 24-bit/48k sample rates because of the Mixamp 5.8. My next step is to run a optical over to my Receiver that can accept up to 192k sample rates and see how it handles the information.

I also played a good 2 hour session in Battlefield 3 last night with the Mixamp 5.8 with the Asus driver managing the S/PDIF output. It sounded good! Really good. I was hearing new things for the first time. Directional staging was really good. The Dolby Digital Surround button still did not produce any change in the audio to the headphones, but it sounded so good, I question myself if it's even required. So then the question is, will games offer Dolby Digital encoded audio? Seems that is going to be a resounding "NO" for the PC gaming industry. PS3/XBox seems to have standardized this, but PC games will continue with other Audio standards and allow sound cards to provide the post processing.

So, the next step in my testing is:

1.) Try S/PDIF to the receiver and see how the audio encodes at 192k.
2.) Try the Mixamp 5.8 with my PS3 to test the Dolby Digital 5.1 encoder on the Mixamp that I have yet to experience.
3.) Try gaming via the analog outputs on the Sound Card, the way it was designed to be heard.​

 

[Pako]

Unpacked my Sennheiser HD-650's tonight. Got my headphone mounted and started going to my flac collection. I never actually made it too a game, I was stuck listen to some oldies for the first time again. There are details that were never there before. The response seem flat in response. Normally I have a need to grab the EQ but I find myself listening to good music the way the engineer intended it.

Weight - Although a big headphone, they feel light on my heads and forget that I'm wearing them.

Comfort - See weight. The head band does cause some strong pressure when I first put them on, but as I type this out, I can't even feel the headphones after a few hours of listening.

Overall Sound Quality - Flat. Accurate. Great staging. Detailed. If anything, the highs may be a bit heavy side, but they don't get brittle or harsh. I haven't got any ear fatigue yet. These are not bass cans. If you are into feeling bass from your headphones, I would suggest something else, Dr. Dre's perhaps?

What would your neighbors say? - These are open back so my get to breath. This is great in my basement when I'm not trying to isolate the sound. These phones would be a problem on the plane or the bus for example, "They" will be able to hear you.

From what I've read, these need to break in. I'm excited as the slightly exaggerated highs are supposed to smooth out once broken in.

Reference material used:
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon (1973) - 24-bit/96k Flac 2.0
Duke Ellington and Count Basie - First Time (1960) - 24-bit/48k Flac
Rush - various tracks and formats.

Given some time, I should be able to provide a better, in depth review, but for now I am enjoying this very much.

 

[Tesla]

Don't believe the hype about burn in, it's all psychological(and I do have measurements to prove that). The HD650's are great cans, and scale well with improved amps and sources. For an open back though, they are a bit bassy compared to other offerings and go excellent with EDM and classical (if that's your thing )

For a bassy 'phone, there's the Ultrasone HFI-580 (<$120), the Audio Technica Pro700mk2 (<$160), Denon AH-D2000 (<$260, can vary), and the Ultrasone Pro 900 (<$400). Stay away from Beats.

 

[Pako]

Don't believe the hype about burn in, it's all psychological(and I do have measurements to prove that). The HD650's are great cans, and scale well with improved amps and sources. For an open back though, they are a bit bassy compared to other offerings and go excellent with EDM and classical (if that's your thing )

For a bassy 'phone, there's the Ultrasone HFI-580 (<$120), the Audio Technica Pro700mk2 (<$160), Denon AH-D2000 (<$260, can vary), and the Ultrasone Pro 900 (<$400). Stay away from Beats.

So, I only have a few hours on the HD650's, how could I measure my phones to see if there is any speaker excursion differences from the new stiff cones to some that have had a chance to stretch out a bit?

With exception to hard dome tweeters, I have experienced new, broken in, and plain wore out speakers during their life time of service. How did you test them, and how could I go about doing my own test to measure any differences?

One thing I didn't mention before was that these cans CAN handle bass if you have enough power to push them. I have them a hefty 30hz boost just to see how they would hand and they didn't miss a beat. What was lacking was the headphone amp began to run out of power when the bass would attack. That is an issue with the sound cards headphone amp, not the headphones. I will say, however, that I can't imagine that anyone would actually listen to music that way, but is nice to know they can handle it should you want to.

As far as Dr. Dre Beats, I didn't like them, but that's my personal preference I guess.

 

[Shaun]

Thanks for the PM Pako.

Glad to here that so far you are enjoying your new headphones. 👍
I especially liked this bit.
Reference material used:
Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon (1973) - 24-bit/96k Flac 2.0

That's exactly the first thing I would put on, then the immersion version, then my Original Master Recording vinyl rip. All for testing purposes of course.

*must resist buying more hi-fi gear*

Cheers Shaun.

 

[Tesla]

So, I only have a few hours on the HD650's, how could I measure my phones to see if there is any speaker excursion differences from the new stiff cones to some that have had a chance to stretch out a bit?

With exception to hard dome tweeters, I have experienced new, broken in, and plain wore out speakers during their life time of service. How did you test them, and how could I go about doing my own test to measure any differences?

One thing I didn't mention before was that these cans CAN handle bass if you have enough power to push them. I have them a hefty 30hz boost just to see how they would hand and they didn't miss a beat. What was lacking was the headphone amp began to run out of power when the bass would attack. That is an issue with the sound cards headphone amp, not the headphones. I will say, however, that I can't imagine that anyone would actually listen to music that way, but is nice to know they can handle it should you want to.

As far as Dr. Dre Beats, I didn't like them, but that's my personal preference I guess.

Well, headphones don't really use 'cones', and especially not ones as large as speakers (where over a few hours there is some mechanical break in due to the size of the parts. There's a great objective viewpoint here, that shows the difference in frequency response on a 'phone that apparently changes the most with burn in.

To make your own tests, you'd need a soundproof room, a high quality (i.e equal to what you paid for your headphones, at the very least) microphone and consistent testing conditions over a long period of time.

They do handle bass very well, and it's excellent bass (great texture, depth and body) to go with it, but because it doesn't have that cup to reverberate against (like in a closed back can) there isn't the same quantity.

And I think someone mentioned an amp before, are you using the built in on the Xonar or an external one? I'd personally recommend the Objective 2, about $150 pre-built, and it's built with objective sound quality in mind. Often compared to $500 amplifiers, and having heard it myself, it's in line as my next purchase.

 

[Pako]

Well, headphones don't really use 'cones', and especially not ones as large as speakers (where over a few hours there is some mechanical break in due to the size of the parts. There's a great objective viewpoint here, that shows the difference in frequency response on a 'phone that apparently changes the most with burn in.

To make your own tests, you'd need a soundproof room, a high quality (i.e equal to what you paid for your headphones, at the very least) microphone and consistent testing conditions over a long period of time.

They do handle bass very well, and it's excellent bass (great texture, depth and body) to go with it, but because it doesn't have that cup to reverberate against (like in a closed back can) there isn't the same quantity.

And I think someone mentioned an amp before, are you using the built in on the Xonar or an external one? I'd personally recommend the Objective 2, about $150 pre-built, and it's built with objective sound quality in mind. Often compared to $500 amplifiers, and having heard it myself, it's in line as my next purchase.

This is an interesting quote from that article,

If they sound lousy out of the box, but they start sounding a lot better as you listen to them over time, it's your amazingly versatile brain figuring out how to cope with the world.

I have noticed this time and time again in the studio when recording and mixing myself or with other artists. There have been many a late night session in mixing when I have sent everyone home because the brain will start to fix the mix in your head and compensate for things that are or are not there. This is a phenomena that I have personally experienced many times. It is so strange because you can have the mix sounding just as sweet as you could imagine and go to bed feeling a sense of accomplishment only to have your rewards crushed when you hear the mix with fresh ears and more importantly, a fresh brain in the morning. I have found that any straight mixing beyond about 4 hours is a complete waste of time in most cases.

I do have a a matched pair of Shure SM81's that could get the job done, and a sound proof studio rooom but preamps are all analog interfaces so there will be no scientific way to assure that the mic gains were identical every time. I will have to rely on the article you posted. Interesting read, by the way.

And yes, I was using the internal HP amp on the audio card. I'll have to have a look at the Objective 2.

I managed to pull myself away from some music last night and tried some BF3. Once again, I heard in game sounds that I have never heard before. Simply amazing. I love these headphones!

👍

EDIT: I don't like to use acronyms, but OMG!

And I think someone mentioned an amp before, are you using the built in on the Xonar or an external one? I'd personally recommend the Objective 2, about $150 pre-built, and it's built with objective sound quality in mind. Often compared to $500 amplifiers, and having heard it myself, it's in line as my next purchase.

What have you done to me? I have spent my entire morning reading up on the O2 and it's history. I am now seriously thinking of building my own.....like I have time to do that. HAHA. Simply amazing. Looks like I can by one pre-assymbled for $144 + cost of transformer to power it or I could build it myself for around $100. I thought it would be cool to build your own and be happy with it.

Anyways, thanks for the info!

 

[Tesla]

No problem, only happy to help 👍