My consoles are in the basement, in sort of a low-tech mancave, and it would take a bit of volume to bother anyone else in the house. Since I am Aged, and there are others in the home, often I can't really use my surround sound system to full effect. In my mind at least, it makes a difference if, in the midst of a game, I think I can hear someone sneaking up behind me.
I liked the spacial awareness I got from my very first surround sound headphones. Though they didn't have a microphone, I wasn't playing online at that point.But then two things happened: I got a new LCD TV without a headphone jack, and I started playing XBox Online. Now here's where the Aged Gamer get old-sounding. Using the stock XBox Live headphones, I couldn't really hear what anyone was saying. Now, it turns out that a lot of y'all either mumble, scream, or both into the boom mike, and no amount of audio fidelity is really going to help that much, but I didn't know that yet.
So on a whim, I tried these:
I know, the thought of a 50 year-old man wearing these either makes you groan or giggle. But there turned out to be a couple of fatal (for me) flaws. The rigging of these things to the Xbox was a pain, using a patch cord that required that I dig up the adapter that allows an analog audio output from the XBox (I use HDMI to connect). That was just irritating. More confounding was the absence of a volume control on the unit. Well that just didn't make any sense. So I got rid of those and got these after considerably more research:Turtle Beach makes a well-reviewed X41 which has Dolby 7.1 Surround. Boy that sounds really neat. It also sounds like about $180 on Amazon, a bit too rich for my wallet and my needs. The X31 (around $80) also has a wireless transmitter which connects to the audio-out of the XBox via a piggyback adapter, which just seems cleaner than the wired Skullcandy phones. The transmitter box is powered by one of the USB ports on the XBox. The headphones fit me well, are comfortable, and sound seems pretty decent. There is a button for special effects such as increased bass and spacial separation, but I like my sound flat.
It's hard to tell if the boom mike is helping much. No one ever answers me, even if I think I have something to say. But at least the little soundy icons on the XBox screen move when I speak.I haven't appreciated much the purported benefit of headphones in online playing. I don't know if there is not enough spacial separation in the online signal, or whether these headphones don't convey stereo separation well. But they do seem to facilitate communications online, and they do seem to allow me to crank the volume a bit, which I'm sure my family appreciates.
For now, I'm happy with my purchase. I believe there were a few new gaming headphones to come out of CES this year like these:
but for now, I'm content to hear what I've been missing. Perhaps as we gamers age, there will be nifty XBox branded Dolby stereo hearing aids.
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