KVR Audio

gruberman · Post by **gruberman** » Thu Jul 02, 2015 9:12 am

Do not buy a pair of 7.1 headphones. Let your soundcard do the 7.1 stuff and use a good pair of stereo headphones.

fluffy_little_something · Thu Jul 02, 2015 9:29 am

Never heard of such headphones. Do they have 8 membranes?!

Probably not, which might be why they suck...

MeldaProduction · Post by **MeldaProduction** » Thu Jul 02, 2015 9:34 am

Ok folks, so bad news

I'm now owner of Razer Tiamat, they really have all those speakers and they suck... For a gamer probably ok, but for me no way. For some surround testing it will probably be "survivable". My DT770M sound so much better (yeah a little hifi, but...). With the Razer headphones there's really no separation between side and rear channels, low end is missing unless subwoofer is used (it works well though imho).

fluffy_little_something · Thu Jul 02, 2015 9:43 am

Just found an image:
http://www.overclock3d.net/gfx/articles ... 01285l.JPG

Given how close they are together and how close they all are to the ear, (basically all the same distance), our hearing might not have the time resolution it would take to register the tiny delays it would take to create the illusion.
Normal headphones already have problems recreating spacial sound properties correctly.

MeldaProduction · Post by **MeldaProduction** » Thu Jul 02, 2015 9:45 am

Sadly, true... Maybe some prefilter could make it better... But I don't think they provide any kind of software solution...

fluffy_little_something · Thu Jul 02, 2015 9:47 am

Maybe you can give them back, if they were expensive...

MeldaProduction · Post by **MeldaProduction** » Thu Jul 02, 2015 9:49 am

Well, it's the best out there right now... for testing anyway

...

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Thu Jul 02, 2015 10:17 am

It might work if the headphones had motion sensors. Then it could adjust what you hear when you rotate your head to give an accurate model of the surround sound. Without that it's just bogus (imho)

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Thu Jul 02, 2015 10:20 am

What does 7.1 have to do with head motion?

ThomasHelzle · Post by **ThomasHelzle** » Thu Jul 02, 2015 10:21 am

A setup with surround speakers is really worth it IMO.
It's so much fun to sit "inside" the music.
The satellites don't need to be huge if you have a subwoofer or larger mains, nearfields like the JBL LSR305 do just fine. Since they all work together you get good volume even with such small units.
If you put the surround speakers on stands, it's easy to move them aside when you need the space.

With good stereo headphones, binaural encoding can also give a basic impression, but is far from the fun with speakers, since they also interact with the room and make the experience much richer.
The IRCAM hEAR plugin is quite okay for the price, but don't expect wonders.

Cheers,

Tom

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Thu Jul 02, 2015 12:09 pm

chk071 wrote:What does 7.1 have to do with head motion?

It's because you have only two ears. If you try to pinpoint the location of a sound, you slightly twist your head and you analyse the difference that makes. Otherwise you cannot distinguish weather it comes from the front or back. If surround phones don't mimic that, you're still left clueless.

MeldaProduction · Post by **MeldaProduction** » Thu Jul 02, 2015 12:20 pm

Nope, sorry, but that's not how it works. You can pinpoint the source location without moving the head based on many many psychoacoustical clues, such as filtering of your skull & ears...

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Thu Jul 02, 2015 12:28 pm

Yeah, with a 7.1 speaker setup, you won't have to turn your head for the directional effect. The problem with headphones and 7.1 is that the positioning will be far too narrow to have that effect. And in the case of the USB sound card which came with mine, the problem was also that the surround effect was really badly made, and most of the effect was simply a muffling of the sound, and some added reverb. I guess it should be better with those Razer headphones as they have more than 2 speakers, but it'll probably still be pretty narrow.

MeldaProduction · Post by **MeldaProduction** » Thu Jul 02, 2015 12:53 pm

Sadly I can confirm it is narrow indeed

as expected but I was still hoping

.

V0RT3X · Post by **V0RT3X** » Thu Jul 02, 2015 2:15 pm

MeldaProduction wrote:Sadly I can confirm it is narrow indeed as expected but I was still hoping .

Ah that sucks, I actually never tried them in person and was going with what a friend had told me.

Good 7.1 headphones?