Headphones for the Xbox Series consoles

KageMaru · January 20, 2021, 7:23pm

Zappy5:

… The thing is your headset (which is a bit unusual) is doing processing to convert the 5.1 signal from the console (I assume it takes 5.1 though not entirely sure how given no optical support…) into a simulated surround sound to play in your stereo headphones. Because headphones by definition are stereo. Now whilst I agree that for the console to do this you need to select one of the surround sound simulating modes. But given windows sonic is free…not really sure there is much point in headsets doing it, personally. Interesting that you can tell a difference in native atmos - I can imagine a big difference with a full atmos setup but I can’t tell much difference with headphones personally. I’ve switched to DTS:X as I personally think their headphone implementation is better.

Yeah, headphones by definition are stereo, which is where the simulated aspect comes into play

You don’t need optical support to support a virtual surround sound though. My older turtlebeach PX24 and Playstation Golds supported surround sound. They both also offered a stereo mode where the surround sound was disabled.

As for telling the difference. It’s all trickery obviously but I’d be surprised if you didn’t tell the difference in scenes like the one linked below when switching from standard SS on a SS headset and then listening to the same audio using a stereo headset with Atmos enabled. Doesn’t sound like you have a headset with virtual surround sound, so I’m not sure if I’m able to help show my point there though.

At the end of the day, the head phone manufacturers aren’t all going to assume everyone has a format enabled on their xbox, so there are bound to still be gaming headsets that simulate surround sound without enabling those formats. It’s in this respect that I think Sony’s approach is probably the better of the two.