Turtle Beach Headset Has DTS Headphone:X
Turtle Beach launched what the company calls a "world's first:" a PC gaming headset with DTS Headphone:X 7.1 surround sound. Called the Ear Force Z60, this headset was first introduced during CES 2014 back in January, and it's now available at online retailers and in local stores for $119.95.
"DTS surround sound represents a new approach to audio that is sweeping across the film and gaming industries and fundamentally changing the way consumers experience sound," said Bob Picunko, chief marketing officer of Turtle Beach. "At Turtle Beach we are incorporating DTS Headphone:X into our gaming headsets to ensure players have the best possible audio experience."
According to the company, its engineers created presets so that gamers can better hear their footsteps in the snow, or shell casings that hit the ground. They accomplished this by pulling the center channel in towards the players' midsection, which supposedly makes those noises sound even more realistic.
The headset includes 60 mm speakers surrounded by "breathable," around-the-ear mesh cushions. Other features include a microphone monitor so you can hear your voice without having to shout, Dynamic Chat Boost that automatically raises the chat volume when the game volume grows louder and a high-sensitivity microphone mounted on a flexible and removable boom.
The headset also includes an inline control unit, shown above, for controlling the main and chat volumes and the surround sound modes, and it has a button for muting the microphone. This controller connects to any PC with a USB port, and it doesn't require software to set up.
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> $120
Get Audio Technica ATH-m40x headphones, and a mod mic 4.0. That's about $150. Infinitely better than any gaming headset could ever hope to be.
> $120
Get Audio Technica ATH-m40x headphones, and a mod mic 4.0. That's about $150. Infinitely better than any gaming headset could ever hope to be.
Everybody knows that regular headphones have better overall quality. I have high quality headphones. The point of these headsets and ones like it, is they can do 7.1 and with the DTS Headphone X can offer 11.1 simulated surround for gaming. Really the point is the surround sound processor Z60 amp. I'm sure the Technica doesn't
include a surround processor amp.
Schwatzz, DTS offers sound to be produced vertically like Dolby Atom.
At least in terms of music and movies, I prefer DTS but with games, the audio quality is average anyways so DTS or Dolby will work well.
Happy surround, the Prisoner...
Compared to the Astro's, great value...
Sennheiser PC360 has very good performance and a superior mic.
include a surround processor amp.
Stereo can do surround just fine. Besides, you can just download this surround sound program from Razer if you really care about that kind of thing.
http://www.razerzone.com/surround
But every time I have heard "virtual surround" it made everything sound like it was being played through tin cans. So I don't know why that is desirable.
include a surround processor amp.
Stereo can do surround just fine. Besides, you can just download this surround sound program from Razer if you really care about that kind of thing.
http://www.razerzone.com/surround
But every time I have heard "virtual surround" it made everything sound like it was being played through tin cans. So I don't know why that is desirable.
I haven't checked lately about the Razer surround program. Last time I checked you had to have a Razer device to use it. From what I've heard it works ok, better then Realtek sound chip but not as good as the Dolby or DTS solutions.
For gaming I use a 5.1 analog headset run through a surround processor but mostly use home speakers( I have a high quality setup) for 5.1/7.1 gaming, movies and music which sound better than most headsets or headphones anyways. Having said that, virtual surround has gone leaps and bounds in the quality of sound and it's spatial clues.
To answer Easylover: The Sennheiser PC360 for a headset is great but over priced imho at 300.00 plus. It's too bad the mic keeps breaking on them. What you really have to do is check out some different ones and find one that suits your music and gaming. Generally, music for vocals, acoustic, classical and jazz, you want a good headphone. Rock, rap and etc an average quality headphone or headset will probably be fine.
Happy listening, the Prisoner...
Compared to the Astro's, great value...
Compared to stereo headsets(which can simulate surround perfectly), not so great value. Never liked surround on headsets, they're not the real deal on headsets, know what I mean.
I would strongly recommend not buying from them.
Well, sorta wrong / sorta right. Yes, DTS has had many formats around for a while, but this is DTS Headphone:X, a new format for emulating 11.1 channels.
Remember that DTS signals require licensing fees ( sometimes, ) and special hardware/software to encode/decode it in real-time ( same goes for Dolby. ) Note that decoding it usually isn't an issue since that's handled on the speaker or receiver side. Real-time encoding isn't as common. Most game devs don't want to pay DTS or Dolby licensing fees and relatively few mboards have the hardware to do it in any case. So most the surround sound in games right now is just uncompressed audio across the 3.5mm multi-channel jacks.
If you plug into the S/PDIF port on the mboard, you're only getting stereo in games, not 5.1 digital audio. If you play movies on your PC, you'll get 5.1 over the S/PDIF because the encoded DTS or Dolby audio track was already stored on the DVD or embedded in the movie file, so it's being fed straight to the S/PDIF with no encoding necessary.
To get real-time DTS and Dolby, you need DTS-Connect and Dobly Digital Live capabilities. The PS3 and X360 both had hardware to run the reat-time encoding. Most add-in sound cards for PC do this too ( though DDL seems to be more common than DTS-C. ) Some newer LGA 1150 mboards have DTS-Connect as well ( but not DDL that I know of. ) In the case of these headphones, audio data bypasses the mboard and is sent over USB to be processed by the headphones ( or more accurately by the DSP in the remote block on the cord. ) That DSP sends a virtual surround stereo signal to the cans.
As far as Dolby Atmos, that requires special hardware too. It's just a different form of sound processing for layering and positioning audio.
include a surround processor amp.
Stereo can do surround just fine. Besides, you can just download this surround sound program from Razer if you really care about that kind of thing.
http://www.razerzone.com/surround
But every time I have heard "virtual surround" it made everything sound like it was being played through tin cans. So I don't know why that is desirable.
I haven't checked lately about the Razer surround program. Last time I checked you had to have a Razer device to use it. From what I've heard it works ok, better then Realtek sound chip but not as good as the Dolby or DTS solutions.
For gaming I use a 5.1 analog headset run through a surround processor but mostly use home speakers( I have a high quality setup) for 5.1/7.1 gaming, movies and music which sound better than most headsets or headphones anyways. Having said that, virtual surround has gone leaps and bounds in the quality of sound and it's spatial clues.
To answer Easylover: The Sennheiser PC360 for a headset is great but over priced imho at 300.00 plus. It's too bad the mic keeps breaking on them. What you really have to do is check out some different ones and find one that suits your music and gaming. Generally, music for vocals, acoustic, classical and jazz, you want a good headphone. Rock, rap and etc an average quality headphone or headset will probably be fine.
Happy listening, the Prisoner...
What about Kingston HyperX Pro or Cloud Gaming headset. I've head so much praise for these headsets. Are they really that good?