Decent headphones that actually fix trash sound in this game?

[Adeptus Lebowski]

Are there any sound setups you guys have that actually give true directional sound in this game?

I use Dolby Atmos app and have a decent wireless headset but not top line though. In most other games i hear things with amazing clarity, especially in high production games like Red Dead 2 etc.

In this game it is mainly the footsteps that i struggle with. I can sometimes hear them but the distance is not accurate and the direction feels off. When there are multiple footsteps etc then forget it lol.

I've been told that using a decent headset with a 3.5mm jack into a decent soundcard is best but then others say that you only get true surround and best overall quality from USB headsets. Or is the sound in this game simply what it is and we are stuck with it?

Thanks

[El Tromp Wins]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lebowski Pro-Dude:

So i tried the expensive Beyerdynamics MMX 300... the overall sound is really bad. Everything ambience wise is too low and when gunshots or melee happen its too loud.

Your motherboard is old or has a really bad sound chipset ?, with amplifier ?. I mean highly doubt those beyerdynamic has "bad sound". Even if it is the "gaming line". Maybe you have to get used to "good audio" for the first time in your life (no joking).

Anyway I repeat, as an advise; don't buy anything but good stereo headphones. all that 7.1 is dogcrap. There are 7.x with speakers built in the cup but they are tiny and too close to your ear. Those headphones are expensives and you are just going to get 'fake sound'.

Up to you but there is no better audio than stereo headphones. I mean literaly, there is no better audio quality than a good studio headphones can give.

I recomended to you in before messages that for a nice headphones you need a decent enough sound card, either by itself or built in the motherboard (I have a 300$ MB with a proper sound card). AND (important) that your motherboard sound card should has amplifier, because you need it to handle that high impedance that good headphones has.

[Evillo]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Abradolf Lincler:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lebowski Pro-Dude:

So i tried the expensive Beyerdynamics MMX 300... the overall sound is really bad. Everything ambience wise is too low and when gunshots or melee happen its too loud.

Your motherboard is old or has a really bad sound chipset ?, with amplifier ?. I mean highly doubt those beyerdynamic has "bad sound". Even if it is the "gaming line". Maybe you have to get used to "good audio" for the first time in your life (no joking).

Anyway I repeat, as an advise; don't buy anything but good stereo headphones. all that 7.1 is dogcrap. There are 7.x with speakers built in the cup but they are tiny and too close to your ear. Those headphones are expensives are you are just going to get 'fake sound'.

Up to you but there is no better audio than stereo headphones. I mean literaly, there is no better audio quality than a good studio headphones can give.

I recomended to you in before messages that for a nice headphones you need a decent enough sound card, either by itself or built in the motherboard (I have a 300$ MB with a proper sound card). AND (important) that your motherboard sound card should has amplifier, because you need it to handle that high impedance that good headphones has.

no issue with the "Razer Tiamat 2.2 V " and a good soundcar, (my integrated one can handle it properly), but I admint that since the game is born as binauras you may find some gliches as long the way, they sound a lot better when you see them to play in games like battlfieln 5 or watch a movie on a DB disk. I juste reorder a pair on turtlebeach I will let you guys know how the behave now

[XIII]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lebowski Pro-Dude:

Damm mate, thanks for the tech info as i just don't understand this sound stuff enough, appreciate the help mate

Its really complicated and theres a lot of myths out there. I feel like I had to become an audioo expert to even understand the basics xD
But if you want a more straightforward definitions:

1. Stereo sound is 2 channel headphone with no amplification. If the game has a good sound engine, that is usually good enough for basic surround audio.

2. There is "Virtual surround sound", that what dolby athmos does. It is brute forcing spacial audio using HRTF (also called binaural sound). You have to set the game to 5.1 or 7.1 sound, and the dolby athmos software mixes it down into 2 channel "surround sound" for your headphones.
This is a matter of taste, I know some people really like this. Personally I find its not that accurate, it eg lacks any vertical audio, and the sound quality suffers a lot. Sounds like Im in an aquarium sometimes.

3. The "ultimate" surround sound experience you can get right now is if you use 2 channel headphones, and the game itself has HRTF built in. And Hunt Showdowns has this, same as eg CSGO or Valorant. Its sometimes considered to have the best game audio in gaming.
As people said, you have to disable ANY sound extension for that. You dont want an equalizer, bass boost, virtual surround software, or so running in the background, that will ruin the sound-mix of HRTF.
Personally, I got myself wired, ~100 bucks Hi-Fi headphones and thats enough for a great experience. Gaming headests come with a mic, but are usually super overpriced for their quality. And bonus-features like USB often mean worse quality for the same money.

4. I dont even want to mention it, but its good to have the warning:
There is "true surround" 5.1/7.1 gaming headsets. Those are headsets with a bunch of speakers in each earphone. You set the game to 5.1/7.1 again, and the headphones will use their different speakers.
Some people will always defend their purchase decisions, but these things are basically a scam. They dont give you any good surround sound, because they just lack the space and speaker positioning that would be necessary for that.
They basically only exist in gaming hardware and nowhere else. Please nobody support this idiocy.

[El Tromp Wins]

+1

I still don't understand why some people still caring about gaming headphones, when you have 3 millions thousand videos on YT explaining everything about headphones or about audio in general, in case you don't have any idea about it.

Guys just ask yourself why professional audio workers/musicians use just proper studio/hifi stereo headphones and no multi-speaker atmosh1et.

I repeat; there is no better sound than good stereo sound.

So

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lebowski Pro-Dude:

dude

please, don't commit the error of buying sh1ett three-dimensional audio with 4,7 speakers in each nose hole. You are going to waste money.

[XIII]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Abradolf Lincler:

I still don't understand why some people stay caring about gaming headphones, when you have 3 millions thousand videos on YT explaining everything about headphones or about audio in general, in case you don't have any idea about it.

I suspect because they dont even know what videos to look at, because audio is a very complicated topic. So you go and buy "gaming headsets", because you think they gotta be good for gaming, otherwise they wouldnt be called that way, wouldnt they?

Ive certainly made naive purchasing decisions in my life. Ive just got lucky to have early experience with solid hifi-headphones, I kmew how much better they sounded.

And there are solid gaming headsets, they are just incredibly expensive. They might give you a bad impression of how poor sound with most gaming headsets is. Like some esports dude might use >300€ headsets and its probably good.

I repeat; there is no better sound than good stereo sound.

Thats generally my take away too. Maybe if you got 3000€ speakers and a perfectly balanced cinema room, you might get close, but good stereo is really underrated.
And of course if you then got HRTF, its actually godly, even with mid tier equipment.

[El Tromp Wins]

Początkowo opublikowane przez XIII:

I repeat; there is no better sound than good stereo sound.

Thats generally my take away too. Maybe if you got 3000€ speakers and a perfectly balanced cinema room

Well I was speaking about headphones.

Yeh I'm thinking about some good cinemas aout there with the lastest "turbo atmo-systeam 1 link mega"...

[XIII]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Abradolf Lincler:

Well I was speaking about headphones.

Yeh I'm thinking about some good cinemas aout there with the lastest "turbo atmo-systeam 1 link mega"...

You just made a really good point, because good stereo headphones most of the time are just better than any alternative. At least when it comes to affordable solutions.^^

Only thing they lack is physicality of audio (eg feeling bass), but thats hard to get right at the best of times.

[Evillo]

Początkowo opublikowane przez XIII:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Lebowski Pro-Dude:

Damm mate, thanks for the tech info as i just don't understand this sound stuff enough, appreciate the help mate

Its really complicated and theres a lot of myths out there. I feel like I had to become an audioo expert to even understand the basics xD
But if you want a more straightforward definitions:

1. Stereo sound is 2 channel headphone with no amplification. If the game has a good sound engine, that is usually good enough for basic surround audio.

2. There is "Virtual surround sound", that what dolby athmos does. It is brute forcing spacial audio using HRTF (also called binaural sound). You have to set the game to 5.1 or 7.1 sound, and the dolby athmos software mixes it down into 2 channel "surround sound" for your headphones.
This is a matter of taste, I know some people really like this. Personally I find its not that accurate, it eg lacks any vertical audio, and the sound quality suffers a lot. Sounds like Im in an aquarium sometimes.

3. The "ultimate" surround sound experience you can get right now is if you use 2 channel headphones, and the game itself has HRTF built in. And Hunt Showdowns has this, same as eg CSGO or Valorant. Its sometimes considered to have the best game audio in gaming.
As people said, you have to disable ANY sound extension for that. You dont want an equalizer, bass boost, virtual surround software, or so running in the background, that will ruin the sound-mix of HRTF.
Personally, I got myself wired, ~100 bucks Hi-Fi headphones and thats enough for a great experience. Gaming headests come with a mic, but are usually super overpriced for their quality. And bonus-features like USB often mean worse quality for the same money.

4. I dont even want to mention it, but its good to have the warning:
There is "true surround" 5.1/7.1 gaming headsets. Those are headsets with a bunch of speakers in each earphone. You set the game to 5.1/7.1 again, and the headphones will use their different speakers.
Some people will always defend their purchase decisions, but these things are basically a scam. They dont give you any good surround sound, because they just lack the space and speaker positioning that would be necessary for that.
They basically only exist in gaming hardware and nowhere else. Please nobody support this idiocy.

I agree and disagree on some points,
2. dolby is useless and damaging in hunt, on games that actually support it it can give a great experience, same with THX
3. on hunt you vunst disable any kind of virtualization, the mixer can actually be tuned to help you hear the footsteps even better (at least a little depending on the mixer and hw)
4. I also own a 7.1 headset and you can get a very precise location using them (expetion made from a area just behind you where you can't locate with the same precision as the rest); too bad that using them in hunt is king a of a waste because the game may support them but they are not implemented properly since the binaurad audio is supposed to be only stereo, I tried some games that can make full use of them and the sound become amazing

[StatTrack LCD]

Playing tarkov will change your mind on the audio of this game. IMO this game has the best audio out of any FPS.

[XIII]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Evillo:

I agree and disagree on some points,
2. dolby is useless and damaging in hunt, on games that actually support it it can give a great experience, same with THX[
3. on hunt you vunst disable any kind of virtualization, the mixer can actually be tuned to help you hear the footsteps even better (at least a little depending on the mixer and hw)
4. I also own a 7.1 headset and you can get a very precise location using them (expetion made from a area just behind you where you can't locate with the same precision as the rest); too bad that using them in hunt is king a of a waste because the game may support them but they are not implemented properly since the binaurad audio is supposed to be only stereo, I tried some games that can make full use of them and the sound become amazing

2. In theory dolby should work just fine, as long as Hunt supports 5.1/7.1 sound output and you set the game to that. Same for your "true surround" headset. Both sollutions utilize normal speaker sound, there shouldnt be any support necessary.

3. If you are really desperate, you can try that, but any modification of the sound has the potential to screw HRTF up. Thats why you should start without any changes.

4. Yeah Im gonna have to disagree hard on that one. For one those headsets tend to sound like garbage, even the expensive ones, cuz they use a bunch of tiny, cheap speakers (and its gaming headphones). And maybe you can get used to the weird speaker setup, but its not how realistic sourround sound woirks.
And HRTF is pretty much objectively the superior solution to "true surround", because it utilizes runtime differences. Its not even a question; if Hunts surround sound doesnt sound directional+precise to you, then likely because your headset is screwing something up or youre too used to this "fake" speaker setup that you dont get how surround sound is actually supposed to work.

[Revalopod]

I use Windows sonic, loudness equalisation and HyperX Cloud Revolver and I can tell direction quite easily. Distance is a bit harder to tell with loudness equalisation on but it really helps hearing footsteps especially crouched ones. Windows sonic I'm not sure what it does I've just had it turned on for ages

[Der Atzenkeeper]

im using hyperX cloud ll and it works perfectly

[Con.RoXP]

First of all, there's a lot of outdated information here. Hunt fully supports surround since 2019[huntshowdown.fandom.com];
"One of the things we're excited about is that Hunt: Showdown uses Binaural Audio. All you need is a pair of stereo headphones to allow you to accurately tell where monsters and enemies are in 3D space. That's why we recommend to play with your headphones in stereo, but our spatialization solution also supports surround speaker setups like 5.1 and 7.1. "

Even though it talks about speakers, this still works very well with surround software for headphones.

I've been using Razer's surround software for more than 5 years (now using THX Spatial) and as such I'm fully used to surround and can't stand stereo anymore. Surround sound creates a soundscape while stereo (even the directional stereo Hunt uses which is still stereo at the end of the day) does not and hence it lacks depth. I also find stereo very unnatural in the way the audio cuts from one side to the other as well as how unbalanced it is. If something's on my right I don't need my right ear blasted while my left ear receives no sound. Irl your left ear will still pick up sound too from whatever's on your right.

Case in point, I've seen people complain about not being able to tell the distance of footsteps properly while I've never had this issue because with surround I have proper depth.
Furthermore, by doing that, surround makes smaller noises much easier to hear. So many times I've called out very distant crows or horses to my teammates and their response was "I didn't hear that".

As for headsets, imo no one needs to spend hundreds of € for studio headsets for gaming. I dislike the term "gaming headset" too but they are more than adequate for what they're meant to do. There are good and bad ones so research is still needed before making a purchase.
At the end of the day, for me personally, using my surround software (which also comes with an equalizer <-- very important) plays a vastly bigger role than the headsets themselves. Even the ones I'm using right now which I really like and I researched a lot before buying, they'd be worthless to me if I was to use them in stereo. Like I said, I can't stand stereo anymore and I'm not only talking about gaming.

[76561198870445561]

ROFLCOPTER!

[Barry MaCockiner]

Use good quality stereo headphones from any of the major quality headphone manufacturers, it'll be fine.

Gaming headsets are mostly overpriced plastic ♥♥♥♥♥.

Hunt's audio was recorded, apparently, according to their info using a binaural microphone, that's two mics placed in a dummy human head.

They go on to say that their spatialization solution supports 5.1 and 7.1.

You can't hear information that isn't recorded at the start though so these surround solutions are simulated in some way, that, coupled with all kinds of motherboard/♥♥♥♥♥♥ sound card simulations of surround are probably what mess it up for a lot of people.

Check your soundcard does Left/Right properly, checked you haven't got them panned wrong. Use stereo cans.