Need accurate positional surround sound for headphones

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OpenSource Ghost

Limp Gawd
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Feb 14, 2022
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My ASUS Xonar DGX with low-latency UNi drivers is awesome, but it uses Dolby Headphone for positional surround sound, which sucks regardless of profiles I try. There are several surround sound positional audio technologies out there for headphones. Dolby Headphone, Creative X-Fi/CMSS, Razer Surround, and some others. I am not talking about "virtual surround sound" that tries to upmix stereo signal to fake 5.1/7.1 audio. With proper headphones surround sound technology, user selects 5.1/7.1 in audio settings and these technologies downmix selected 5.1/7.1 source to stereo while preserving positional audio cues. Dolby Headphone sounds bad because it makes audio sound "reverb-ish and echo-ish". X-Fi/CMSS sounds best because it preserves natural audio and provides accurate positional audio, but it is only available for Creative sound cards.

Are there any other technologies that do the same for headphones and do it well? Again, I am not talking about "virtual surround sound", but accurately downmixing 5.1/7.1 to 2.0 stereo while preseriving positional audio cues. It should work on all games as long as 5.1/7.1 source is selected/used.

Some games, such as Rainbow Six: Siege, natively support such surround sound downmixing and preserve positional cues, but most games do not.

Windows 10 and 11 support some new Dolby formats and also support Sonic Spatial Sound for Headphones, but I can't figure out whether those format perform proper 5.1/7.1to-2.0 downmix or just try to create fake surround sound from 2.0 sources.
 
CMSS - Great as it was, it requires a X-Fi card. Which are pretty ancient at this point. Newer Creative hardward use's SBX
SBX - Is ok. I use it allot as it I have a Creative AE-5. It does a decent job of simulating a 5.1 sound experience in headphones and works well enough for me to figure out where people are around me. Upside to this tech is creative lets you customize it abit. So if your a person that loves tons of reverb for rear channel ques, you can dial it up.... I'm not one of those people so I have that turned down.

This is a great post over on Guru3D about various tech's out there.
https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/chastitys-review-of-virtual-surround-solutions.436597/

It's worth noting that SteelSeries bought Nahimic. Who has recently freely released "Sonar" for use with any sound device. You can check it out in the link below.

https://steelseries.com/gg/sonar

I haven't tried it yet. But it's supposedly similarly clean like SBX, which is a good thing. So I would recommend you give it a go.
 
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TrunksZero said:
CMSS - Great as it was, it requires a X-Fi card. Which are pretty ancient at this point. Newer Creative hardward use's SBX
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Yes it's true that X-Fi cards are getting up there in age but I still have not found anything better than CMSS-3D, and the X-Fi cards still work great in Windows 11. I can vouch for this since I'm running an X-Fi in almost every computer I have at this point, all on Windows 11. The fact that the X-Fi cards are older now is almost a good thing in the sense that you can usually find a standard X-Fi Titanium on eBay in the $20-30 range these days. It really doesn't matter how old the cards are as long as they still work great. There is also the X-Fi Titanium HD, which has a better DAC and swappable OpAmps, but cannot usually be found very cheap since it was much more rare and almost legendary. Your best bet would be a cheap regular X-Fi Titanium, running digital output to a nice external DAC. This is what I have setup on my main computer. You get the best-of-both-worlds mix of old and new.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/155277723623
https://www.ebay.com/itm/185653180888
https://www.ebay.com/itm/153840710737
https://www.ebay.com/itm/155101585633
 
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Wow didn't know PCI-E X-Fi's where so cheap. Noice!

*edit*
You could also try the Dolby Atmos Headphones trial in Windows. It's not the same as the older Dolby Headphone tech.
 
TrunksZero said:
Wow didn't know PCI-E X-Fi's where so cheap. Noice!

*edit*
You could also try the Dolby Atmos Headphones trial in Windows. It's not the same as the older Dolby Headphone tech.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately the Dolby Atmos for Headphones forces your Windows speaker settings into Stereo, which then causes 99% of games to run in Stereo mode. Only the games that have their own speaker settings or support Atmos directly you get proper virtual surround sound.

Anyway, if one is interested in entirely software solution to proper headphone surround sound then look into Hesuvi. With it you can simulate a lot of different HRTF systems, including Atmos and CMSS3D and such.
 
This is something I have great interest in, and have been after for literally over a decade. Currently there are two "best" options in my opinion, though one one really applies to you:

--The best for general Windows use, with head tracking support, is Redscape Audio. You can hear demos of the tech online, without head tracking. Currently it is on sale and is an extremely good deal, just $50 for software and headtracker which makes me hope that it is not a "going out of business" kind of sale. This is software that creates a virtual 7.1 speaker device in Windows which you point your system at, and it then does the calculations and outputs to your headphones. It does a good job just as is, but what pushes it to the best spot is head tracking. You can't really get accurate positional audio with static calculations since part of how we determine where a sound is coming from is moving our head. Even small varations in position cause a change in sound and you don't realize you are doing it. So you need something that tracks your head movement to really take things out of your head and make it sound like it is in the world, which this does.

The downsides are that you have to attach the headtracker to your headphones, which is another cable and more bulk, though not a ton, and that becuase it is software it does use CPU power on your system. So long as you have a modern midrange or higher CPU it should be fine but if you are on an older CPU and/or low core count it could sap power you need for your games.

All in all though, would recommend it highly to anyone who wants good positional audio from games. Also great for music listening as it makes it sound like you are listening on speakers, not stuck in your head. If you do use it, you may wish to use its EQ to help correct for your headphone's response. I would use one of the Oratory1990 presets as a reference as they are very good.


--The best overall HRTF algorithm I've tried can be found in the awkwardly named dearVR Monitor. This has, bar none, the best HRTF I've heard. The rooms you can put your speakers in sound extremely good and realistic, and the adjustments are just fantastic. It also supports 3D speaker formats from Atmos, Auro3D, NHK, and so on. However, it has two big downsides that make it not a good choice for you:

The biggest is that it is a VST plugin, it doesn't run natively in Windows you run it in a DAW. Doesn't help with games. While you could, in theory, setup a VST bridge and do audio routing and all that jazz that is a lot of work compared to Redscape. Really it is only useful for audio production, not for gaming.

The other is that it doesn't do headtracking except with a VR setup. That means that even though it sounds great, you still don't get the positional cues as well as you would with head tracking. I, and others, have harped on them about this but so far it is VR only if you want headtracking.


So Redscape is what I use, and what I'd currently recommend to everyone for gaming. It may not have the world's most elegant interface, but it does the trick and does it well.
 
Damn, having proper positional audio is almost like cheating in games like Rainbow Six: Siege. My Kill-to-Death ratio improves drastically from just not moving, listening, and knowing exactly where my opponent stands or to where my opponent is moving and when my opponent is reloading!
 
OpenSource Ghost said:
Damn, having proper positional audio is almost like cheating in games like Rainbow Six: Siege. My Kill-to-Death ratio improves drastically from just not moving, listening, and knowing exactly where my opponent stands or to where my opponent is moving and when my opponent is reloading!
Click to expand...

Yeah good audio in the right games can make a very large difference. I'm not a huge fan of COD for instance, but the current games and engine have 3D ray traced audio. The abilty to track people by sound alone can be pretty stellar. No need for SBX, CMSS and the like in an instance that a game has audio that good :)
 
Sycraft said:
So Redscape is what I use, and what I'd currently recommend to everyone for gaming. It may not have the world's most elegant interface, but it does the trick and does it well.
Click to expand...
Looks like it's discontinued, unfortunately.
 
I have found that simply investing in a good quality stereo headphone does the trick. You don't have to pay a ton but it helps to throw a bit of cash at the issue. Say the amount of a GPU.

I currently have a hifiman 560, emotiva basx a-100 amp which allows you to utilize the full power of the speaker amplification in the headphone amp. It's great for power hungry headphones. I use an external USB dac nobody has heard of called a soncoz. End result is awesome in a game with good positional audio like battlefield. I can hear up, down, how far, footsteps etc very clearly. Not quite like being there but close enough. You can't sneak up on me.

Cheaper version of this would be something like audio Technica 700 or 900 headphones with a decent external USB dac/amp.
 
Agree with spaceman . A good set of stereo headphones makes a world of difference. I dont even have a cream of the crop or anything, beyerdynamics dt-880s 600ohm and games sound amazing. Also with just stereo sound setup you also dont ever run into weird software issues or having to fight with configurations etc. With enough clarity you can hear the difference of in front or behind in a quick fight. My soundblaster ae-5 card can power these headphones with no trouble but i do have them running into a schiit magni, just for ease of switching in and out from headphones to powered speakers.

And if looking for a mic, i use a samson q2u usb mic and it does a wonderful job for its price. IMO it works well to keep things separate instead of all together (ie headsets) because if you need to replace or upgrade you only need to worry about one specific thing.
 
While good headphones help, they still don't really get the sounds out of your head like proper HRTF + headtracking does. I have Sennheiser HD800S phones, which are some of the best for an open sound, but they get so much more realistic when paired with something like Redscape (RIP) or Waves Nx Abbey Road.
 
If you use some as crappy as Dolby Headphone, any set of headphones ends up producing very "reverb"-ish audio without accurate positional cues. Redscape CMSS and and SBX are the best and you can get those positional cues regardless of how crappy/awesome your headphones are.
 
So an Audio technica ad700 or 900 with an sbx capable soundcard is the budget king.
 
MaZa said:
Unfortunately the Dolby Atmos for Headphones forces your Windows speaker settings into Stereo, which then causes 99% of games to run in Stereo mode. Only the games that have their own speaker settings or support Atmos directly you get proper virtual surround sound.

Anyway, if one is interested in entirely software solution to proper headphone surround sound then look into Hesuvi. With it you can simulate a lot of different HRTF systems, including Atmos and CMSS3D and such.
Click to expand...

I have Dolby Atmos for Headphones and use Windows 11 and it automatically selects 7.1 speakers or surround sound in games.

I am using a HiFiMAN Edition XS and I noticed a very big improvement in CS:GO in imaging.
With Dolby Atmos for Headphones enabled, I can tell precisely where the direction of footsteps in CS:GO.

someone also did some testing and found Dolby Atmos for Headphones is very good.
 
rcarlos said:
I have Dolby Atmos for Headphones and use Windows 11 and it automatically selects 7.1 speakers or surround sound in games.

I am using a HiFiMAN Edition XS and I noticed a very big improvement in CS:GO in imaging.
With Dolby Atmos for Headphones enabled, I can tell precisely where the direction of footsteps in CS:GO.

someone also did some testing and found Dolby Atmos for Headphones is very good.
Click to expand...


Huh, maybe things have changed since I last tried it.
 
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