Good 7.1 Gaming Headset, if any?

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jtledoux

jtledoux

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Hello,

Anyone had some good experiences with 7.1 gaming headsets? If so what brand and model?

I am looking at a few on Amazon, however I have never had any experience with these headsets and do not know if the 7.1 is an advertising gimmick.

The ones I am looking at are the Corsair Vengeance 2100 Wireless Dolby 7.1 Gaming Headset (V2100)
&
Logitech G430 Surround Sound Gaming Headset with Dolby 7.1 Technology .

Thanks in advance for your advice.
 
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Ahem. Okay, this is about to get complicated.

I wrote above about Dolby Digital, AKA AC3. This is a proprietary and very common method of encoding 6 or 8 digital channels...
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Pinhedd

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Good gaming headsets are very hard to find. I have a 5.1 gaming headset that I love (Sharkoon X-Tactic), I'll give you a few pointers:

1. Don't let Dolby Digital be a selling point. It's handy if you wish to use it with a console that has an optical output, but it's completely useless for PC gaming. PC games rarely ever support dolby digital outside of the odd cutscene, everything is done natively through the audio stack which results in a set of uncompressed PCM signals which is the native format for the digital to analogue converter that actually generates the signal for the speakers. Encoding audio into a compressed bitstream is an entirely needless intermediary step.

2. Headsets that use 3.5mm jacks are your best friend. This is quadruply true if you have a discrete sound card from Asus or Creative Labs. The audio processors in most USB headsets are trashy by comparison, and the power capabilities of USB or battery powered devices aren't terrific. My headset has its own power supply and built in amp.

3. 7.1 is not necessarily better than 5.1. There's a practical upper limit to the total transducer area available inside of a headset. A 5.1 headset requires no less than 4 transducers (speakers) in each side: center, front L/R, rear L/R, and sub. The center and sub are duplicated. A 7.1 headset requires no less than 5 transducers in each side, added a side L/R. Smaller and/or cheaper transducers may be used to keep cost and weight down, which may result in degraded audio quality including frequency gaps.
 
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jtledoux

jtledoux

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Thanks for your response Pinhedd. I was actually kind of fooled by the Dolby digital headsets, didn't even think that games wouldn't support it.

I do have an integrated 7.1 sound card on my Asus Maximus VII Hero motherboard with the latest SupremeFX. And the Logitech headset above has both USB and analog plugs, so I am assuming that would be what I should look for.

One thing I do not understand is how can 5.1 or 7.1 audio be transmitted through 1 plug? I would have thought 7.1 audio had to be transmitted through all the colored plugs on the back.
 
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Pinhedd

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Ahem. Okay, this is about to get complicated.

I wrote above about Dolby Digital, AKA AC3. This is a proprietary and very common method of encoding 6 or 8 digital channels (Front-Left, Center, Front-Right, Side-Left, Side-Right, Rear-Left, Rear-Right, and Low-Frequency-Effect) into one digital bitstream. Most prerecorded multichannel audio sources will use a variation of Dolby Digital or its competitor Digital Theater Sound (DTS). This is the defacto method of storing audio tracks for DVDs and BluRays. An AC3/DTS bitstream is also required to transport 6 or 8 channel audio over an optical medium using the S/PDIF interface as S/PDIF does not support more than two discrete uncompressed channels (it is limited to stereo). HDMI does not have this same limitation, and can transport 8 channels of uncompressed audio.

A software or hardware decoder is required to decode the AC/DTS bitstream back into its component PCM audio channels that will be sent to the digital to analogue converter. Some headsets (such as the Sharkoon X-Tactic Digital) come with an optional decoder which has an optical input. This allows these headsets to work with most game consoles that use optical S/PDIF as an audio transport medium.

That about covers Dolby Digital. What I did not mention is Dolby Surround AKA Dolby Pro Logic.

Dolby Pro Logic / Dolby Surround is a non-discrete analogue encoding method that encodes four or more surround channels into two stereo channels. A Dolby Pro Logic / Dolby Surround decoder can separate the analogue stereo channels back into the component analogue surround channels. Dolby Surround is not a perfect technology. It is lossy and due to the non-discrete nature it does suffer from channel cross-talk (audio components from one channel may overlap into another channel). However, unlike Doby Digital which requires a compliant decoder to work at all, the encoded Dolby Surround stereo signals will still work on a non-compliant stereo device (albeit strangely). A Dolby Surround compliant decoder is only needed to decode the surround channels. Dolby Surround is popular on broadcast television where the receiver may or may not be capable of handling Dolby Digital.

In summary, the Logitech gaming software takes six discrete PCM surround channels and encodes them into two PCM stereo channels (left and right). These channels are then pumped out in stereo through the audio DAC as they normally would. The Dolby Surround decoder in the headset detects the matrix encoding and attempts to separate the encoded surround channels from the analogue stream.

Dolby Pro Logic is more lossy than Dolby Digital, and both are inferior to good old fashioned discrete surround, but you may not be able to tell the difference.
 
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jtledoux

jtledoux

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Thank you for that incredibly detailed explanation. Didn't think choosing a headset would be so difficult lol. I will explore my options, however you have answered my questions that will allow me to choose my headset, so again thank You!
 
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Pinhedd

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You're most welcome. If I may insert a shameless plug, check out the Sharkoon X-Tactic, it's a native 5.1 headset. It's pricey, but very highly rated and extremely comfortable (if a bit bulky).
 
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Pinhedd

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When I purchased mine there were only two versions, the base version and the Digital version. The Digital version includes a Dolby Digital / Dolby Surround decoder which can be used to decode AC3/DTS from either an electrical or optical S/PDIF signal. The decoder box can be removed and the headset hooked up to the 3.5mm ports directly, which is what I have done.

Sharkoon has since revised the lineup slightly. There now appear to be two new headsets, the S7 and the Pro.

The S7 appears to be similar to the Logitech one mentioned above, the analogue interface is stereo with surround channels encoded into them. It has a decoder box though and does support Dolby Digital, but this is useless on PCs for the most part.
From what I can tell it has only a single 40mm transducer in each earpiece. This is quite common for many surround headsets, it's not the end of the world. It's possible to generate pretty decent surround in a headset using only a single driver but it requires a fairly predictable environment to do so.

The Pro is the improved and rebranded X-Tactic Digital. It's a discrete 5.1, meaning that there's at least one driver per channel and each audio channel is carried independently of the others (no encoding). As far as configuration goes, it's identical to configuring a classic 5.1 surround setup. There's no drivers or software to install.
It has 4 transducers in each earpiece, which adds to the weight considerably. If you have a small head, this may not be the headset for you. It is very comfortable though, and unlike many other headsets which use bizarre designs it never hurts my ears.
 
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