I remember having my 5.1 setup on OG Xbox with a receiver and full room surround and each tire and the engine, exhaust, damage and the bollards were all being done relative to the tires and the centter channel (essentially the ideal setup for a 5.1 setup for tires, and the engine in the center) and it blew my mind. Maybe that would be a decent test of directional surrround headphoens.
I don't know about headphones themselves, but after Immersive came out with their spacial audio feature for FFXIV, which was so cheap I would have been a fool not to go with it, I don't know if it was groundbreaking or anything, but it did improve the surround sound experience I got from the game with headphones on. It amplified sounds I'd never even noticed before, like subtle rushings of wind or tiny trickles in a wet cave, and smoothed the transition of sound around my head as I turned. What was the most fun for me was when I was in the kitchen, with my headphones still on, and Chocobo ran past me without me being able to see it. Not only could I tell which side it had passed me on, the right, but I could tell it came from in front of me, ran fairly close on my right side but not right next to me, and that it continued away behind me for some distance before coming to a stop. That was a pretty cool experience in a video game. I think the difference with Immersive is that it actually alters the audio in the game itself, not just in general, and tailors it to be a surround sound experience, be that just levels in various volumes, or other changes so that the game's audio works better with any set of headphones from recent generations. My own gaming headphones were not marketed specifically with surround sound, but I sure get it out of them. Still, even for a feature like Immersive, or Adobe Atmos that tries to assign each element as it's own object, that is going to be limited to how the developers actually construct audio and tracks in the game. It doesn't fix everything, some audio in the game is still written into an ambient track, like the chatter you get when large groups are present even at a distance, or some bird chirp tracks, and sadly that won't change unless the developer goes in and alters those tracks to have directional input rather than being ambient. If there is no 'object' corresponding to a track, there is nothing the surround sound software can do about it. It might as well be processed as background music. The same thing probably happened to you with the car. I imagine the track is ambient for the engine and radio when the car becomes 'you', and there is no way to hear that as surround sound unless the devs change it or you have some kind of mod attached to change its behavior. Part of figuring out why some surround-sound experiences work better than others is having an understanding of how video game audio works in the first place, and how devs construct the different audio tracks and channels you experience in the game. If those tracks are not set up for directional input, or not set up properly, you will never get a surround sound experience out of them, no matter how good your equipment is. Movie companies on the other hand tend to have entire groups of staff dedicated to working out audio positions, and the director can control where the camera is at any given time, making it easier for the audio staff to decide what audio channel track any given sound, besides ambient noises, should be located in the overall sound production. Still, if they make an immersive pack for Minecraft, that would make tracking zombies to cave pockets a lot easier when you are mining or pinpointing water and lava flows by sound. Minecraft already does a good job of handling this with its base audio, and my friend and I already use directional sound in the game to locate things. It probably helps that in Minecraft, very few sounds are treated as being ambient. Mostly the music, and maybe some things like crickets chirping at night.
I've been using a 'tru' surround sound (5.1) headphones with 3 speakers in each earcup. I can tell the angles of sound input - positional audio seems good as I can close my eyes and orient myself to sound sources in-game. The drivers are all off-centre. My model is the 'Roccat Kave XTD' and unfortunately they are not being made anymore 😞.
Ooh, I bet finding something like that would make my Immersive pack even cooler. My headphones, as far as I know, only have the usual single speaker on each side, and Immersive already made my game's surround sound much better. I can only imagine what it could do with actual positional speakers.
Just us a good Open back headphone. Suggestion: Superlux HD668B Phillips Shp 9500 Sennheiser 58X Jubilee Sennheiser PC38X Note: You don't need Amp with these
only difference i notice in cyberpunk is the exhaust gets quiet sooner when cars drive by than they do on stereo. Not sure if I would call that better.
I've used older 7.1 systems before, like Astro, Triton, Logitech, etc. All are pretty bad, but for the past 3 years I've used Sennheiser GSX 1000 amp with various headphones(not headsets) and I can't not use it for competitive games. The advantage here is you can use headphones suited to you, not the cheapo' headset with bad audio quality.
I dont want to be rude but the 2 game used in this testing *For Atmos* should not have been, while ye Cyberpunk & Coldwar both has the sticker from atmos, does not mean it works well, I'v found CW sound just to be flat out awful & lacking sense of where the sound is coming from hek even sound like their behind me when their clearly in front of me, The 2 game I know works well on is Overwatch & MW19/WZ stick a bot on and walk around. I personal use Atmos on my SSA3 and SSA5.
I have a Razer Headset that uses Razers THX System as surround. Its working great for me but I really hate Razer Software in general. It has bugs, uses way to much performance and is just annoying to deal with in general. For that reason I bought a brand new HyperX Alpha S, I tried their surround and it sounded like someone over at HX took a massive dump into a tin can. So I thought, "yeah okay then I'll use stereo, that should work just fine, I'll be able to hear everything well". Yeah, well no... On one side the stereo sound was definitely better than the HyperX Surround, thats for sure. But now following are my thoughts on stereo generally and stereo in comparision to Razers / Georgle Lucas' THX. Stereo was indeed good at showing me the rough direction, like for example I knew whether an enemy is on my left or on my right. But A: at the cost of audio quality and B: it lacked immersiveness. With a THX Spatial Audio for Headset System I could tell exactly if an enemy is left, right, how far away, how far to the left and how far to the right. It helped me insanely because I heard a sound from any off-screen sound source, for example an enemy to my left in Valorant and as soon as I heard a step I did not only know that there was an enemy to my left, but I also knew where on my left he was. Front? / 90° straight left? / further to the back? --> all very much distinguishable. With Stereo on the other side I know exactly that there is someone on my left or I know exactly that there is someone on my right BUT it is harder to know exact positions or distances and such. Another thing I instantly hated about stereo was how much louder one side would always be. Whenever there was an enemy to my right I'd hear him 90% on my right earcup and 10% on the left, with the THX it would be about 60% to 40%. For Stereo users this is normal but even after some time of trying to get used to it I still experienced it as painful. Of course sounds coming form the left side are much louder on the left earcup when using stereo, that is the only way for a stereo system to "tell the user" where the sound which they hear is coming from. I felt like the HRTF from the THX-Spatial Audio is exactly what manufacturers try to recreate when they make "7.1 Virutal Surround Gaming Headsets". All that marketing aside from my personal experience Razer is not only the only company that managed to do just that (exclusively with their THX Certified Headphones like the Razer Kraken TE), but they actually smashed it. In a game of Valorant the pure Spatial sound experience feels lifelike!! Long story short in comparision to the THX Surround sound neither the HyperX Surround System nor normal Stereo sound could even get close enough to an enjoyable audio experience for me to justify keeping the headset - so I refunded my HX headset. Now after about 5 years since I bought this Razer Kraken TE and half a year after my HyperX disaster the Razer Headset im using right now is starting to break down and I sometimes hear some kind of crackling noises in the background, the cable is probably just slightly broken. This makes me have to look for a new headset for the future and since I hate Razer Software in general (as I already mentioned) I'm on the look for a different headset that gives me just as much of an emersive experience. In a Linues Tech Tips video I saw that the only thing that might get close to what ive been looking for might actually be the Dolby Atmos and I was really happy, looking for reviews for cool headsets like the Hs80 with Dolby Atmos. To me this video was disappointing... to say the least. Its truly heartbreaking for me to see that gaming might loose a lot of its charm it had to me for half of my life. The thing I spend most of my day with, gaming, listening to music.... 😢
Had the HS80 and Dolby Atmos was pure garbage on those at least! In my opinion the best virtual surround sound headsets I have tried is Logitech G935 and Creative SXFI Gamer by far! In other words DTS:X 2.0 or Super SXFI. Also just downloading the apps on regular headphones can't compare as they aren't tuned for the surround sound, I have recently tried the G733 (awful), Blackshark v2 (dissapointing) and JBL Quantum 810 (Okey, but not impressed). Nothing can beat my good old CM Storm Sirius 5.1 anyway, but those where "true" surround.
To me, it's nothing but snake oil. I've tried a number of solutions for headphones, and I've never been able to perceive front / back placement, just like you.
Same here, I've even owned a multi driver 7.1 headset. I now much prefer my AKG 712 Pro's with no virtual surround and as you say it seems easier to know where a sound is coming from.
This video was depressing. Not your fault, I guess I'm disappointed by the limitations of physics and current tech. Maybe someday we'll have multi-driver true-surround sound headphones that actually work well.
They do exist, but they're out of fashion because they're expensive (I think). 'Virtual' was cheap so it became the standard. The Asus ROG centurion was released in 2017 for instance - it was expensive, but multi-driver. I'm still using a cheaper multi-driver 'tru' surround sound headset .... I sacrificed a little in terms of sound quality but that's irrelevant to me. There may be true multi-driver headphones on the market still.
@@righteousindecision2778 are they genuinely better for directionality? I wonder because while they absolutely COULD be better: 1. Marketing lies a lot, and 2. I don't know if game sounds are coded in a way that could even make use of multi-driver well with how rare they are. Do you notice a difference?
@@brianfox340 Yes, I agree that marketing lies a lot. The real life (positional) audio test for me is closing my eyes, taking a bunch of keys and throwing them over my shoulder. Without opening your eyes you can usually point yourself at the place your keys landed with about 5 degrees of accuracy. A good headset has to be able withstand a similar kind of test. Can you figure out the direction of a sound source accurately without sight? For a reproducible test, I can turn on Deus Ex (mankind divided), turn on the television (in game), and rotate around on the spot. Using my multi-driver headphones, The television now sounds it is rotating around me when I close my eyes - which it should. Stereo mode removes this. I can confidently say game coding is not an issue, drivers and included discrete sound cards do the necessary processing. If my driver stops working with windows 10, it might be an issue, but it's been fine. If you've got a good set of virtual surround headphones, and they pass the kind of test I outlined. Great! What is it? My headset is not exactly new, and this is good consumer information. As for contrasting technology, software or 'virtual surround' hasn't seemed anything like as convincing. Since my headset has a stereo mode, I just turn it to stereo for testing; unfortunately using a free variant that claimed surround sound effects did lead to feeling 'surrounded' rather than actually providing a useful positional information. That's only one test though. There have been other owners of my headset who were also underwhelmed by virtual offerings - commenting after they were forced to change models. Reviews like this reinforce the impression that because a lot of people (like me) are limited to just buying one headset (and not trying multiple) it's hard to check whether the claims are true. Linus did a video on the topic once, saying virtual surround was good, but he's not actually a source I trust very much. The more 'audiophile' I hear something is the less I trust it, basically, and Linus - to me - is 200% marketing (and 'audiophile'). He's basically said he's a salesman on one of his WAN shows. The rapid-shot test he used was very much a tech-contest, and not a model contest - and it didn't use my model and brand which of course meant I couldn't take as much away. Some multi-driver headphones did receive bad reviews back in the day. Some of them may not have been that good. The problem was that many of the reviewers were (and some still are) - in my opinion - bad, and didn't really delve into positional audio at all. There was often little description, detail, method, or data. Do my headphones work well for positional audio? Yes! I can usually turn to audio source within 5-10 degrees. But that's useless info considering they were also made around 2013! Getting a Roccat Kave XTD now is pretty much impossible. It's annoying that the industry went for cheaper seemingly worse options. Tell me if you can say otherwise.
Nicely done. It's a great pleasure to come across such a good and detailed explanation for why a ridiculous idea doesn't work as advertised. I was tempted to suggest that an upgrade to some additional ears is a prerequisite but never mind. 😉 A further exploration of human perception will reveal why some people will swear that they can do or in this case hear, what is impossible simply because they believe it so their brain fills in the experience that is supposed to be there.
True 7.1 headsets were too expensive to manufacture, so the industry moved to virtual 7.1 is has always majorly sucked
I remember having my 5.1 setup on OG Xbox with a receiver and full room surround and each tire and the engine, exhaust, damage and the bollards were all being done relative to the tires and the centter channel (essentially the ideal setup for a 5.1 setup for tires, and the engine in the center) and it blew my mind. Maybe that would be a decent test of directional surrround headphoens.
I don't know about headphones themselves, but after Immersive came out with their spacial audio feature for FFXIV, which was so cheap I would have been a fool not to go with it, I don't know if it was groundbreaking or anything, but it did improve the surround sound experience I got from the game with headphones on. It amplified sounds I'd never even noticed before, like subtle rushings of wind or tiny trickles in a wet cave, and smoothed the transition of sound around my head as I turned.
What was the most fun for me was when I was in the kitchen, with my headphones still on, and Chocobo ran past me without me being able to see it. Not only could I tell which side it had passed me on, the right, but I could tell it came from in front of me, ran fairly close on my right side but not right next to me, and that it continued away behind me for some distance before coming to a stop.
That was a pretty cool experience in a video game.
I think the difference with Immersive is that it actually alters the audio in the game itself, not just in general, and tailors it to be a surround sound experience, be that just levels in various volumes, or other changes so that the game's audio works better with any set of headphones from recent generations. My own gaming headphones were not marketed specifically with surround sound, but I sure get it out of them.
Still, even for a feature like Immersive, or Adobe Atmos that tries to assign each element as it's own object, that is going to be limited to how the developers actually construct audio and tracks in the game.
It doesn't fix everything, some audio in the game is still written into an ambient track, like the chatter you get when large groups are present even at a distance, or some bird chirp tracks, and sadly that won't change unless the developer goes in and alters those tracks to have directional input rather than being ambient. If there is no 'object' corresponding to a track, there is nothing the surround sound software can do about it. It might as well be processed as background music.
The same thing probably happened to you with the car. I imagine the track is ambient for the engine and radio when the car becomes 'you', and there is no way to hear that as surround sound unless the devs change it or you have some kind of mod attached to change its behavior.
Part of figuring out why some surround-sound experiences work better than others is having an understanding of how video game audio works in the first place, and how devs construct the different audio tracks and channels you experience in the game. If those tracks are not set up for directional input, or not set up properly, you will never get a surround sound experience out of them, no matter how good your equipment is.
Movie companies on the other hand tend to have entire groups of staff dedicated to working out audio positions, and the director can control where the camera is at any given time, making it easier for the audio staff to decide what audio channel track any given sound, besides ambient noises, should be located in the overall sound production.
Still, if they make an immersive pack for Minecraft, that would make tracking zombies to cave pockets a lot easier when you are mining or pinpointing water and lava flows by sound. Minecraft already does a good job of handling this with its base audio, and my friend and I already use directional sound in the game to locate things. It probably helps that in Minecraft, very few sounds are treated as being ambient. Mostly the music, and maybe some things like crickets chirping at night.
Could you try out woojer or whats its name?
I've been using a 'tru' surround sound (5.1) headphones with 3 speakers in each earcup. I can tell the angles of sound input - positional audio seems good as I can close my eyes and orient myself to sound sources in-game. The drivers are all off-centre.
My model is the 'Roccat Kave XTD' and unfortunately they are not being made anymore 😞.
Ooh, I bet finding something like that would make my Immersive pack even cooler. My headphones, as far as I know, only have the usual single speaker on each side, and Immersive already made my game's surround sound much better. I can only imagine what it could do with actual positional speakers.
Just us a good Open back headphone.
Suggestion:
Superlux HD668B
Phillips Shp 9500
Sennheiser 58X Jubilee
Sennheiser PC38X
Note: You don't need Amp with these
only difference i notice in cyberpunk is the exhaust gets quiet sooner when cars drive by than they do on stereo. Not sure if I would call that better.
8:12 nort nort nort nort
Use the Dolby atmos custom settings and turn on virtual surround sound and you'll see the difference, default game mode is bad :(
I've used older 7.1 systems before, like Astro, Triton, Logitech, etc. All are pretty bad, but for the past 3 years I've used Sennheiser GSX 1000 amp with various headphones(not headsets) and I can't not use it for competitive games. The advantage here is you can use headphones suited to you, not the cheapo' headset with bad audio quality.
I dont want to be rude but the 2 game used in this testing *For Atmos* should not have been, while ye Cyberpunk & Coldwar both has the sticker from atmos, does not mean it works well, I'v found CW sound just to be flat out awful & lacking sense of where the sound is coming from hek even sound like their behind me when their clearly in front of me, The 2 game I know works well on is Overwatch & MW19/WZ stick a bot on and walk around. I personal use Atmos on my SSA3 and SSA5.
VZR Model One headphone is the answer to precision in surround imaging. You're welcome.
I have a Razer Headset that uses Razers THX System as surround.
Its working great for me but I really hate Razer Software in general. It has bugs, uses way to much performance and is just annoying to deal with in general.
For that reason I bought a brand new HyperX Alpha S, I tried their surround and it sounded like someone over at HX took a massive dump into a tin can. So I thought, "yeah okay then I'll use stereo, that should work just fine, I'll be able to hear everything well". Yeah, well no... On one side the stereo sound was definitely better than the HyperX Surround, thats for sure. But now following are my thoughts on stereo generally and stereo in comparision to Razers / Georgle Lucas' THX. Stereo was indeed good at showing me the rough direction, like for example I knew whether an enemy is on my left or on my right. But A: at the cost of audio quality and B: it lacked immersiveness. With a THX Spatial Audio for Headset System I could tell exactly if an enemy is left, right, how far away, how far to the left and how far to the right. It helped me insanely because I heard a sound from any off-screen sound source, for example an enemy to my left in Valorant and as soon as I heard a step I did not only know that there was an enemy to my left, but I also knew where on my left he was. Front? / 90° straight left? / further to the back? --> all very much distinguishable. With Stereo on the other side I know exactly that there is someone on my left or I know exactly that there is someone on my right BUT it is harder to know exact positions or distances and such. Another thing I instantly hated about stereo was how much louder one side would always be. Whenever there was an enemy to my right I'd hear him 90% on my right earcup and 10% on the left, with the THX it would be about 60% to 40%. For Stereo users this is normal but even after some time of trying to get used to it I still experienced it as painful. Of course sounds coming form the left side are much louder on the left earcup when using stereo, that is the only way for a stereo system to "tell the user" where the sound which they hear is coming from. I felt like the HRTF from the THX-Spatial Audio is exactly what manufacturers try to recreate when they make "7.1 Virutal Surround Gaming Headsets". All that marketing aside from my personal experience Razer is not only the only company that managed to do just that (exclusively with their THX Certified Headphones like the Razer Kraken TE), but they actually smashed it. In a game of Valorant the pure Spatial sound experience feels lifelike!!
Long story short in comparision to the THX Surround sound neither the HyperX Surround System nor normal Stereo sound could even get close enough to an enjoyable audio experience for me to justify keeping the headset - so I refunded my HX headset.
Now after about 5 years since I bought this Razer Kraken TE and half a year after my HyperX disaster the Razer Headset im using right now is starting to break down and I sometimes hear some kind of crackling noises in the background, the cable is probably just slightly broken. This makes me have to look for a new headset for the future and since I hate Razer Software in general (as I already mentioned) I'm on the look for a different headset that gives me just as much of an emersive experience. In a Linues Tech Tips video I saw that the only thing that might get close to what ive been looking for might actually be the Dolby Atmos and I was really happy, looking for reviews for cool headsets like the Hs80 with Dolby Atmos.
To me this video was disappointing... to say the least. Its truly heartbreaking for me to see that gaming might loose a lot of its charm it had to me for half of my life. The thing I spend most of my day with, gaming, listening to music.... 😢
Had the HS80 and Dolby Atmos was pure garbage on those at least! In my opinion the best virtual surround sound headsets I have tried is Logitech G935 and Creative SXFI Gamer by far! In other words DTS:X 2.0 or Super SXFI.
Also just downloading the apps on regular headphones can't compare as they aren't tuned for the surround sound,
I have recently tried the G733 (awful), Blackshark v2 (dissapointing) and JBL Quantum 810 (Okey, but not impressed). Nothing can beat my good old CM Storm Sirius 5.1 anyway, but those where "true" surround.
To me, it's nothing but snake oil. I've tried a number of solutions for headphones, and I've never been able to perceive front / back placement, just like you.
Great explanation!
I had multiple 7.1 headsets. Then I tried the stereo setting on my headset and I think I can spot enemies better with it
Same here, I've even owned a multi driver 7.1 headset. I now much prefer my AKG 712 Pro's with no virtual surround and as you say it seems easier to know where a sound is coming from.
This video was depressing. Not your fault, I guess I'm disappointed by the limitations of physics and current tech.
Maybe someday we'll have multi-driver true-surround sound headphones that actually work well.
They do exist, but they're out of fashion because they're expensive (I think). 'Virtual' was cheap so it became the standard. The Asus ROG centurion was released in 2017 for instance - it was expensive, but multi-driver. I'm still using a cheaper multi-driver 'tru' surround sound headset .... I sacrificed a little in terms of sound quality but that's irrelevant to me.
There may be true multi-driver headphones on the market still.
@@righteousindecision2778 are they genuinely better for directionality? I wonder because while they absolutely COULD be better:
1. Marketing lies a lot, and
2. I don't know if game sounds are coded in a way that could even make use of multi-driver well with how rare they are.
Do you notice a difference?
@@brianfox340 Yes, I agree that marketing lies a lot.
The real life (positional) audio test for me is closing my eyes, taking a bunch of keys and throwing them over my shoulder. Without opening your eyes you can usually point yourself at the place your keys landed with about 5 degrees of accuracy.
A good headset has to be able withstand a similar kind of test. Can you figure out the direction of a sound source accurately without sight?
For a reproducible test, I can turn on Deus Ex (mankind divided), turn on the television (in game), and rotate around on the spot. Using my multi-driver headphones, The television now sounds it is rotating around me when I close my eyes - which it should. Stereo mode removes this. I can confidently say game coding is not an issue, drivers and included discrete sound cards do the necessary processing. If my driver stops working with windows 10, it might be an issue, but it's been fine.
If you've got a good set of virtual surround headphones, and they pass the kind of test I outlined. Great! What is it?
My headset is not exactly new, and this is good consumer information.
As for contrasting technology, software or 'virtual surround' hasn't seemed anything like as convincing. Since my headset has a stereo mode, I just turn it to stereo for testing; unfortunately using a free variant that claimed surround sound effects did lead to feeling 'surrounded' rather than actually providing a useful positional information. That's only one test though.
There have been other owners of my headset who were also underwhelmed by virtual offerings - commenting after they were forced to change models. Reviews like this reinforce the impression that because a lot of people (like me) are limited to just buying one headset (and not trying multiple) it's hard to check whether the claims are true.
Linus did a video on the topic once, saying virtual surround was good, but he's not actually a source I trust very much. The more 'audiophile' I hear something is the less I trust it, basically, and Linus - to me - is 200% marketing (and 'audiophile'). He's basically said he's a salesman on one of his WAN shows. The rapid-shot test he used was very much a tech-contest, and not a model contest - and it didn't use my model and brand which of course meant I couldn't take as much away.
Some multi-driver headphones did receive bad reviews back in the day. Some of them may not have been that good. The problem was that many of the reviewers were (and some still are) - in my opinion - bad, and didn't really delve into positional audio at all. There was often little description, detail, method, or data.
Do my headphones work well for positional audio? Yes! I can usually turn to audio source within 5-10 degrees.
But that's useless info considering they were also made around 2013! Getting a Roccat Kave XTD now is pretty much impossible. It's annoying that the industry went for cheaper seemingly worse options. Tell me if you can say otherwise.
Nicely done. It's a great pleasure to come across such a good and detailed explanation for why a ridiculous idea doesn't work as advertised. I was tempted to suggest that an upgrade to some additional ears is a prerequisite but never mind. 😉 A further exploration of human perception will reveal why some people will swear that they can do or in this case hear, what is impossible simply because they believe it so their brain fills in the experience that is supposed to be there.
Just buy a HE800S.
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Hi RUclips, hi mom!
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