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USB Headset vs soundcard + headset?

H

Hercules

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 5, 2004
Messages
151
It's been a long time since I've looked into headsets, and owning a *great* one I have to ask the question yet again....

Currently, I use a Medusa 5.1 surround headset that is plugged into my sound card for positional audio in gaming. It works pretty well.

That said -- I have looked at some of the newer headsets, and they are all USB, pretty much eliminating the need for me to have a sound card at all. My question is -- how good are these USB headphones (specifically for gaming) if they come from Logitech or Razer or something? Is the CPU usage going to go up a lot (this was why I went the way I did with the Medusas), and are there any real benefits to having a sound card any more? I don't watch movies or listen to music much on the PC, and even if I do I don't care about the sound quality. I have a nice home theater for all that.

Anyway, I was thinking about buying the G35 headphones from Logitech but I'm hesitant because of the past information I've had, so I wanted to vet it all with you guys first :)

Thanks!
 
I use a Sennheiser USB PC135 gaming headset and it sounds incredible. Great imaging and sound quality. I play a lot of Counter Strike: Source and I occasionally get accused of wall hacking since I'll pop someone in the head as soon as they walk around a corner. I can hear almost exactly where they are and where they are going with this USB headset.
 
Question is, is the USB sound quality and CPU usage better than it has been in the past?
 
Sennheiser make great audio equipment, and those Logitechs have great reviews for them. Razer make great mice, but for audio there's better manufacturers.

USB won't be a problem on any recent machine. The big benefit to the USB sound cards is they have fancy built-in EQ's tailored for their specific output device, similar to Apple writing OSX for a very specific set of hardware.

The benefit is they will sound pretty nice, the negative (if they don't have an adapter for analogue inputs) is that you can't necessarily use them without a USB connection. Also, virtual surround isn't nearly as accurate for 3-D positioning as a physical 5.1 setup so that's another thing to consider.

From what I've seen, you can either get a really nice set of stereo speakers that incorporate virtual surround (either through their own soundcard or the source soundcard) or you can get a pair of headphones that provide excellent 5.1 surround, but aren't necessarily up to par for SQ versus their stereo equivalent.
 
When I had my P4 3.4ghz setup, I noticed no real increase in cpu usage vs using my Audigy 2 ZS.
The sound quality of my setup is excellent and my headset can be unplugged from the usb adapter and plugged into my sound card if I want.
 
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