Some questions about headphones

[Kulith]

I'm currently looking at full sized over the ear CLOSED cans (please no outside noises!). For gaming and music with a flexible budget of $150. And I have a couple questions I can't seem to find definitive answers for.

1) What do people mean when they talk about "bright" and "dark" sounding phones?

2) I currently have a pair of Sennheiser PXC 300 noise cancelling on-ear headphones, which are good for travel. Would I receive noticeable improvements going from these to a full sized good quality headphones? I find that my 2.1 Creative I-Trigue L3800 speakers provide a much more enjoyable music/gaming experience than the PXC 300 headphones. How would good cans compare to my 2.1 setup?

3) Might be a dumb question, but I can't seem to figure out if there is 5.1 surround sound in headphones or not. I see a lot of headphones that have "simulated surround sound" which isn't the same thing afaik. I would really like real surround sound positional effects in my headphones if it exists, for movies and gaming.

 

[Kulith]

nobody?

 

[dderidex]

3) Might be a dumb question, but I can't seem to figure out if there is 5.1 surround sound in headphones or not. I see a lot of headphones that have "simulated surround sound" which isn't the same thing afaik. I would really like real surround sound positional effects in my headphones if it exists, for movies and gaming.

I'm surprised nobody jumped on this one.

Please consider - you have 2 ears. With headphones, you are putting speakers directly over each ear. Why on earth would you need 5 speakers to simulate surround - that your brain already perceives - when your two ears are basically getting speakers directly ported to them?

Rather, what you want to consider for this purpose is the SOURCE. There are a number of ways to 'simulate' (which isn't as bad as it sounds) directional sound sources for headphones. The goal is to create the sound variance that you - already, in-real-life - have when you hear something exactly 3 ft straight in front of you or 3 ft straight behind you. You can tell those sources apart, even though they are equidistant to both ears, because the SHAPE of your ears changes the front vs rear audio. This is not a hard effect to 'simulate', and when properly done, provides a FAR more 'true' surround effect with 2 speakers than 5.1 speakers (or 7.1, or more) possibly can.