Headphone surround sound?

[PC-Noobist]

Im a gamer, if i chose the best sounding stereo headphones i could find for my price range can i plug them in a high end sound card that supports surround sound so my stereo headphones becomes surround sound headphones or do i need headphones that actually say surround sound in the description

 

[esco_sid]

most headphones do not have true surround sound its just virtualized( virtalization is very good they do sound surround) they connect to a regular stereo jack or with spdif optical link such as astro a50 also it would depend on what connector your headset uses to determine if you even need a sound card because if its spdif sound card would make 0 difference from hardware side just some improvements possible from the sound cards software

 

[photonboy]

Gaming headphones are often 5.1 (multiple speakers) and tend to shape the sound profile slightly.

I personally use some older Sony MDR-V700 which are awesome with great bass but they are more "audiophile" and don't have a microphone.

I've never experienced the 3D effect for 5.1, or virtualized stereo (except some demos like the BARBER one).

*If you don't buy "gaming" headphones be careful of the OHM value. If you get the incorrect value your headphones will be too loud.

Lots of GUIDES online you can Google.

**Expensive sound cards:
Be a little cautious here. There's probably ZERO benefit if you use the optical output, and some people claim there's minimal benefit even for analog when comparing the latest REALTEK onboard solutions. I'm going to compare that this week actually as I'm building a new PC.

I definitely noticed a difference between the Z77 Sabertooth onboard audio and my Auzentech X-Fi forte (specifically the onboard audio was a little muffled with good bass and other sounds weren't quite as good.)

Really expensive sound cards are definitely a waste IMO though. It's hard to find a single review I really trust though so in the end I just have to test it myself (with good headphones and speakers).

 

[ssddx]

i would help if you would have read the ops question a little more in depth.

they wanted to know if a "stereo" set of "high end" headphones (studio headphones likely) can be made to act like surround sound gaming headsets with "virtualization" from a high end soundcard similar to the virtualization done on such headsets.

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the answer to this question is "yes".

you would need a soundcard which has "dolby headphone" (i think it comes in either 5.1 or 7.1) which will do the required processing and send it to the headphones to emulate surround sound just like many usb gaming headsets do. most of them are just two speakers which have software to emulate surround sound.

the other thing you would need is to make sure it has the power required to drive good headphones. generally if talking about "good" soundcards this is a yes unless you pick something hard to power (such as perhaps some high end 250ohm headphones... but even these can be powered by good soundcards)

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of course if you didnt want to buy a soundcard you could go with surround sound headsets since they have a soundcard inside them.

sound quality however is much better on good headphones (i'm talking headphones in the $100-200 range) than it is on headsets (even models in the same range of price).

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optical has almost nothing to do with the original question.