Dolby Headphone / virtual 7.1 suck?

Hey I'm an audio noob so forgive my noobness. I recently got a Xonar STX with some audio-technica ATH-A900X headphones and they sound amazing. I've been playing with the STX control panel and turning on Dolby headphones and also tried the 7.1, but it makes everything sound far away and echoes. Especially if you listen to music or TV shows. Playing games it's okay but i still think it sounds bad compared to Bi-pass.

I thought i might have set it up wrong but i went to my friends house who had Corsair 1500 USB headset that also has 7.1 virtual and Dolby headphones. Since its USB its pretty idiot proof to setup and i still hear the same effects and echoes. To me it when trying team fortress 2 and tomb raider it kind of makes things sound far away but I can't notice anything directional, I also think it distorts the sound too much and makes it sound unnatural. Am I doing something wrong or is this how it suppose to work?

DH and that 7.1 virtual DOES sound like that.

Go straight stereo with what you have and see how much better it is.

The best sound card for directional sound is the Creative Z series with SBX pro and scout mode enabled for fps games.

Don't use it for stereo material. Make sure games/movies are configured to output 5.1 or 7.1 sound or it will sound odd. If there is no surround sound, turn it off... that's not what it's for. Dolby headphone isn't made to "upconvert" stereo to surround, it's to provide a virtual surround field when given surround input using only two speakers.

Ryom said:

Don't use it for stereo material. Make sure games/movies are configured to output 5.1 or 7.1 sound or it will sound odd. If there is no surround sound, turn it off... that's not what it's for. Dolby headphone isn't made to "upconvert" stereo to surround, it's to provide a virtual surround field when given surround input using only two speakers.

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Bingo. Lots of people screw this up.

Okay you guys are correct I did screw it up, and I have the new following questions. So on the Xonar STX it has the following options, Dolby Headphone, Dolby Pro Logic II and 7.1 Virtual Speakers and channels. When playing games I am trying 8 channels, with Dolby Headphone and 7.1 this seems most optimal, adding Pro Logic II dosen't seem like it adds much. From what I've read Pro Logic II turns 5.1 into virtual 7.1. I'm not sure if i should be using this, since I thought virtual 7.1 should make things sound 7.1 on its own. On playing games I can hear the 3D but I can't really tell if something is behind me. Everything sounds infront or to the sides. This is using audio-technica ATH-A900X. Does every game need a specific setting or is this setup wrong?

Don't use Pro-Logic II unless you are watching an older DVD that says it's using PLII. Pro-logic was Dolby's way of encoding surround sound into a two channel audio stream via some encoding tricks. If the audio stream wasn't encoded with PLII, you just get regular stereo. My recommendation is to use Dolby Headphone for any surround material.

Devastadus said:

Okay you guys are correct I did screw it up, and I have the new following questions. So on the Xonar STX it has the following options, Dolby Headphone, Dolby Pro Logic II and 7.1 Virtual Speakers and channels. When playing games I am trying 8 channels, with Dolby Headphone and 7.1 this seems most optimal, adding Pro Logic II dosen't seem like it adds much. From what I've read Pro Logic II turns 5.1 into virtual 7.1. I'm not sure if i should be using this, since I thought virtual 7.1 should make things sound 7.1 on its own. On playing games I can hear the 3D but I can't really tell if something is behind me. Everything sounds infront or to the sides. This is using audio-technica ATH-A900X. Does every game need a specific setting or is this setup wrong?

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You need to turn off everything except 8 speakers and dolby headphone. Anything else will really screw the sound up more.

Not a shill but I have had both asus, x-fi and creative cards and below is my opinion:

Really, if you want to hear good directional sound, you have to get a creative Z. It just has the game sound crown atm. I can finally hear people behind me in bf3. The Z uses SBX pro studio and scout mode designed specifically to hear enemies and damned if it doesn't do just that.