Gmok Bonecrusha
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Jun 16, 2004
- Messages
- 1,090
Yep. Best gaming headsets I have owned. Will cost you your 1st male child, but well worth it.
![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
What do gamers look for in headsets?
- Thread starter Hooy
- Start date
Yep. Best gaming headsets I have owned. Will cost you your 1st male child, but well worth it.
If any of you guys are interested, I am selling my Creative X-Fi Titanium HD and Musical Fidelity V-Can II amplifier for $300 bundled. It's time for me to move on from my trusty combo. The V-Can II was ordered May 23rd from Amazon, so it's mint.
Awesome combo for headphones. I find the X-Fi's CM3DSS very natural and realistic, as opposed to Dolby or whatever. The amp is also very strong and powers even HD800's with relative ease.
Trying to fund a new endeavor!
Awesome combo for headphones. I find the X-Fi's CM3DSS very natural and realistic, as opposed to Dolby or whatever. The amp is also very strong and powers even HD800's with relative ease.
Trying to fund a new endeavor!
The MMX300s are excellent with a rather nice microphone, great comfort, and awesome durability, price tag aside. But I wouldn't call them competitive gaming headphones. Their sound is skewed a bit too much towards impact and immersion, which can drown out footsteps, etc.. I do still love them for everything else though, music included if I am lazy.
I use Senn PC360s for FPS games.
I use Senn PC360s for FPS games.
These are my thoughts exactly on how I approach my serious gaming.
My previous experience with this I'll go back to when I competitively played the first Call of Duty (before it became the horrible cookie cutter spray & pray garbage it is today). Many of us purposely lowered our graphics of the map and raised the texture of the people to see people easier. Also lowering our resolution helped our recoil tremendously. Personally for competitive FPS play I'm more interested in a high end sound card (though I still swear by my Audigy 2 ZS), decent headset (I still swear by my Koss SB45), a serviceable GPU, and a fast monitor. Just 2 months ago did I finally take the plunge from CRT to LCD for the fast monitor reason. The only reason being my CRT was too heavy to ship to the Philippines where I go to college lol.
BUT that's from a purely competitive standpoint. When I play single player games, an online game I can't really take seriously, or an MMO I don't mind racking up the graphics as high as I can go
EDIT:
On a side note I saw someone mentioning some Audio-Technica cans. I'm extremely interested in the AD700x and was wondering if anybody had any experience with this FPS gaming-wise and if they can give me a comparison if they own the AD700. All about open cans when it comes to gaming (aside from my beloved SB45 which you'll have to pry off my cold dead fingers)
dandragonrage
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2004
- Messages
- 8,298
Sound cards aren't necessary in many cases because electronics distort your sound a small fraction of the amount speakers do. Sound cards are usually wasted money, even for gamers. Of course, some onboard sound implementations are poor and can bring pops, clicks and other issues which a sound card MAY fix. But if that's not happening, you're paying what, $100, to improve your sound accuracy by an inaudible 0.01% or something. Often better to just dump the extra money into even better speakers/headphones than it is to dump it into electronics. Though onboard sound isn't necessarily going to work well with less efficient headphones (or those with impedance that isn't optimized for onboard/portable audio).
As far as the headsets go, I don't get it either. Every single one of them is inferior in quality to my Beyerdynamic DT990s, or even my fallback Sennheiser HD555s. And I certainly have no use for a microphone being near my mouth instead of on my desk (in fact I prefer it on the desk anyway). I see the whole headset thing as a useless trend for people who don't want a tiny microphone on their desk for probably no good reason at all. Do you all really need your chat buddies to hear you while you take a 1 minute break to go to the bathroom? I especially don't understand why you all feel that USB is a good interface for a headset when you all have actual audio ports which work better. USB is much likelier to run into interference and/or latency issues. One of my friends was just telling me tonight that he can only use his USB headphones on one port because his 2 external HDDs screw up the sound if he puts the headset in any other port. Not a possible issue using real audio jacks.
Besides, with my desktop microphone other people can be in the conversation, not just me.
Last edited:
D
Deleted member 238539
Guest
I mainly look for over the ear style and something that either is USB driven or has an in line sound card. My current G35's are terrible but I am just waiting for them to break in all honesty. Before I bought them I only use Plantronics headsets. I just really like their features and they are really comfortable to wear. I have tried the Tritton headsets and I do like them. The only complaint was the earlier models had detachable mics that were just plain awful, and my friends told me I sound like Lionel Richie and Barry White had a love child.
I think my next set up will be either a Tritton or desktop amp with a decent pair of headphones. All my gamer buddies have switched over to this and they said they can hear directional sounds much better.
I think my next set up will be either a Tritton or desktop amp with a decent pair of headphones. All my gamer buddies have switched over to this and they said they can hear directional sounds much better.
dandragonrage
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2004
- Messages
- 8,298
Do get real headphones, but don't buy an amp until you determine that you need more volume from them. You may end up deciding that more volume would be nice and that's fine, but there's also a good chance that it would just be a waste of money. It would absolutely not increase audio quality unless you compare an amp within its capabilities to a weaker amp being overdriven into distortion. All amps do is increase the potential power output.
I own both the MMX300 and PC360, and as odd as it might sound, much of the time I use my Blue Snowball (desktop cardioid mic) instead of the microphones on the headsets themselves. I only use the attached microphones when mobile or when someone else is in the room. (I can never seem to avoid ambient noise with the Snowball, even with its cardioid pattern. I believe my room geometry is to blame as the room I am in is a lazy trapezoid.)
Anyway, after using every high end headset available, I would have to agree that for most situations and persons using a desktop mic (or something like the ModMic).
Anyway, after using every high end headset available, I would have to agree that for most situations and persons using a desktop mic (or something like the ModMic).
Are you saying that sound cards are gimmicks with an extremely low (0.01%) gain in quality? And that the DT990 is superior to every other headphone? Or gaming headset?
Every "gaming" headset i've personally tried have been trash. I don't claim to be an audiophile but I do enjoy good sound. My computer's soundcard is a Xonar which I pair with my HD598's if I'm looking for positioning in a game, like a fps. I also have a modi/magni combo dac/amp however I also use most of the time for music listening and general audio. I love my 598's but sometimes switch to my DT990's.
Nice setup
I have a Bifrost Uber w/ usb2 and Asgard 2 coming in the mail soon. Sold off my X-Fi Titanium HD, though. I also use the 598's but I find that the HD800's are worlds better for games (soundstage).
Currently using a Fiio E17 to sub in for having no audio (I never plug in and always disable onboard), and while it's a great CHEAP solution, it's just not enjoyable for me anymore.
...
I use a headset so other people aren't in my conversation.
German Muscle
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2005
- Messages
- 6,946
I use the Zalman ZM-MIC1. They arent made anymore and i found a place a year or two ago that had them and bought like 10.
I think he has never tried a good sound card or is always buying $400 motherboards with souped up audio components. There are "gamer" motherboards out there that have really good audio chips, but still even the majority of those cant properly drive a large portion of mid-fi+ headphones without using an external amp.
So lets just assume that you can drive the headphones and arnt getting any pops, thats fine for standard gaming but what if you want excellent positional audio for a FPS game so you can have an edge online and pinpoint peoples footsteps, or a vehicle driving off in the distance that you cant see yet. Thats where a card like the soundblaster Z series shines.
The one advantage of a boom mic off your headphones is less background noise. Even with all the options turned on to eliminate such noise (echo cancellation, background noise suppression, etc) people still complain when I use a rather fancy desktop mic. It doesnt sound as clear as a boom mic, they can hear things in the background (fans on my watercooling setup, room fan, vibrations through my desk etc).
Personally I have heat shrunk a microphone cable to my headphone cable and attached a boom mic to my mid-fi cans as least ghettoly as possible.
Last edited:
Nice setup
I have a Bifrost Uber w/ usb2 and Asgard 2 coming in the mail soon. Sold off my X-Fi Titanium HD, though. I also use the 598's but I find that the HD800's are worlds better for games (soundstage).
Currently using a Fiio E17 to sub in for having no audio (I never plug in and always disable onboard), and while it's a great CHEAP solution, it's just not enjoyable for me anymore.
You would hope the 800s would improve on the 598 lol. Still the 558 is my entry level gaming headphone. My entry level mind you. It is the best overall bang for the buck headphone I have had for gaming. I just use the Creative Z mic that sits on top of my monitor. You can tweak it via the control panel to a point where it sounds fine and only picks up my voice.
Last edited:
I use a very old Logitech webcam on my monitor as the mic. I have had minimal issues with it, so why change it right? Plus I think mic's too close to your nose or mouth can annoy other people if you breathe into them.
I just can't fathom how someone would say that sound cards make no difference
I would think that even a sub $100 card would noticeably improve even the Maximus boards. Eh, oh well. Some people are stuck in their narrow field of view that audio doesn't get any better than the basics, and then there's people who're stuck thinking you need $10000 to enjoy music. I am more towards the side of the spectrum where I feel there are diminishing returns after about $2500. Granted I can't really afford to go further than that.The crystalizer raises the equalizer's low and high's in a parabola shape. What that means is your voice becomes bassier and sharper.