CORRECTION: ModMic 4.0 is actually $49 and not $100. Not sure what I was thinking... we have a ModMic review in the description. it's quite nice!

11:48 How surround audio gaming should be

I didn’t know Chris Pratt was a technology dude 😂

I know it's not relevant to the video but your camera quality and lighting are superb. some of the best I've ever seen on KZfaq.

7.1 Surround is the biggest snakeoil in audio history

Dude you’re Star-Lord!!

So in short: Gaming headphones have a mic that doesn't always sound good, and real headphones have better sound quality.

Comments on this video: 1%: Nice review 99%: This guy looks like star lord

8:24 for sound quality

That was cool and educational. Thank you.

People spend insane money on hardware to get proper visuals (high refresh rate screen and high fps to match it, high resolution and proper GPU to drive it, maybe HDR...). Why not spend to get proper audio as well? I'd say go for proper cans, and while you're at it, proper DAC and amps to drive them.

Generally for gaming some things to take note: -Comfort for wearing long hours, higher end audiophile headphones have a slight advantage since earpads can be changed -Good soundstage -Clear mids that do not feel hollow -Good treble extension: treble should be present and felt but not overly shrill or raspy sounding, also contributes to listening comfort -Bass needs to be fast and clear, should not bleed into mids, or feel boomy Something like HD600 series would be good. HD800 would not really be the best for some people not used to the treble peak, but this could be alleviated with change of earpads or mods I think.

This guy looks like Chris Pratt

That ending was hilarious

You look like Chris Pratt

after i saw that NCIX ad, straight went to the description to check the release date lolz

People say you look like Chris Pratt, but actually Chris Pratt looks like you.

Dat ending though haha

All the comments stemmed about “you look like Chris Pratt”. I say this to that... You do.

0:18 *That shot was amazing*

Oh shit it's Chris Pratt

And don't forget, search for 'VR Ready' 😆

In my opinion, any pair of headphones should have accurate frequency response instead of tuning it for a specific sound signature by emphasizing bass or treble. In this way, you can actually hear what the developers want you to hear.

I think I have seen the mod mic now for like 50 bucks which is nice considering its quality

Wait, $100 for the ModMic 4.0? You got ripped off, got mine for $40.

Corsair Vengeance 2100 and love it. I have a small child and need wireless. It sounds good and the mic picks up clearly without any breathing noise. I also like that when the mic is rotated up out of the way it automatically mutes. No more unwanted listening in.

Wow, I normally can't stand when big channels try to describe audio or headphones because much of the information is a bit misleading, over-simplified, or just plain wrong. This video is very informative and very well done. Good job HWC! My two favorites for gaming: Budget - Philips SHP9500S paired with a V-Moda Boom Pro mic/cable. My current favorite for gaming - Sennheiser HD700 paired with a ModMic 5. I did try the HD800S with ModMic 5 when I owned them but I felt its upper midrange recession didn't help with gaming. The HD700 is better overall. When playing with an Xbox controller, the HD800S was a little too hard to drive. I had to have the volume almost all the way up just to get to moderate volume from the headphones. The HD700 is only half the impedance of the HD800S and works just fine out of an Xbox One wireless controller.

He kinda looks like Chris Pratt...

yesterday got my dt990 and i love them sooooooo much doupt there can be that good gaming headset for that price + had already mod mic for like 45 euro

Real vs Gaming, so gaming headsets aren't real? Oh man, my life's been a lie.

Hi Dmitry, I never understood how sound engineers could allow something like 5.1 headphones, with multiple drivers to happen. When you sit in the living room, surround sound is amazing because slight movement of your head establishes (pinpoint) the surround effect. In a lounge 5.1 setup, the time between the sound takes to go in one the go in the other ear is what makes us recognise if the sound is from the the front or the back. The brain recognises as we turn our head the direction of the first sound is from the more forward ear. In multi driver headphones this, does not happen as the drivers move as you turn your head with your head. The effect must occur between both your ears, and for this a virtual 7.1 surround can simulate this effect pretty amazingly. 7.1 virtual surround works great, especially if it well implemented. Sound algorithms can trick our brains into hearing various directions very well. I just wanted to elaborate why I think physical multi driver 5.1 or 7.1 solutions don't work at all. When you have only two ears, blasting the ear from a driver a little more forward is not what makes it hear it from the front. Our ears are not omnidirectional, they work out direction based on delay between the (only) 2 directions.

$100 for mod mic? Dude I bought mine for $40

So are Gaming headphones not real?

I feel like you missed out on the Astro A50. They are good headphones and I always like it’s a must when it comes to gaming headphones comparisons.

Star lord is giving headphone review

Beats are trash every headphone today has better sound Quality

Damn, all these mics sound terrible Im happy with my Snowball mic

I just had this random 40 yr yelling at me on cod about how REAL surround sound was “only for pros” (such as himself) and now I get to send him this

I wasn't aware gaming headphones werent real

At Christmas time, my Nana and Grandad bought me "Beats Solo HD" headphones. I couldn't face the idea of telling her that I hate the brand, and my £50 Skull Candy headphones are twice as good and yet the Beats cost £160. The annoying bit is, my Mum said she helped chose the gift, and 2 months before christmas, she asked me if I wanted beats and I said how they're the worst brand and they are a complete scam. I'm just going to wait until June or something and buy myself some Sennheisers or anything else.

This channel deserves better. Half a million boo he should have half a billion

Just want to add one thing though: Although its very true gaming headsets are mostly marketing gimmicks there are some that truly are engineered for games in general. I had a talk with a Sennheiser engineer since i wondered about the same. I presented them a HD650 which is a studio headset, a damn good one might i say versus the GSP lineup from Sennheiser. They actually said GSP 500/600 wins in games as they perform way better in sub 80Hz range which the studio set didnt pick up at all. So that was kinda crazy to hear and it should be way more known since most audio fanatics believe studio headsets are the best there is......... but theyre response was basicly...studio headsets are made for music, thats it!

That $100 separate mic sounded worse than the gaming headsets 😂

AKG K712. Not much known, but really good tho xD

I have the Sennheiser PC 360 for a few years now and the comfort for long gaming sessions like LAN-Parties is amazing. After 5+ Hours of Use you really forget about the Headset because it's really light. You get also an intuitive MicMute Switch, you just flip the Mic to the top. The Sound is also clear and in Games like CS:GO it's useful to hear your enemy before he get's to you.

Dude the thoroughness and quality of your reviews are super solid. Thanks for putting in the time and effort.

Alternative title name: Pricey vs Cheaper Headphones.

I've had so many (dead) headsets I don't count anymore :'( Just ordered the siberia h wireless over the g933 lets hope for the best

that moment when you have a cloud 2 and then you find out that they were soupossed to be normal headset :/

If you want to know more about how "Real" headphones can simulate 3D sound. Google "Head Related Transfer Function" or HRTF. It's possible to simulate near-perfect 3D audio experience with well calibrated HRTF. I did an audio engineering project on HRTF at university. Ever since then, I haven't bought into the 5.1 surround thing... Good marketing gimmick though.

Remember when NCIX was a thing...

Beats are some of the most garbage pieces of shit headphones there are. I sell them at a store I work at, and hate them with passion (We can't even offer any protection or any kind of warranty, and they were bad BEFORE apple got them to begin with!)

Logitech g633 Artemis spectrum :DDD got it for my dad for father's day :3

I'm pretty sure virtual surround sound also works by adding a delay between playing sound on either side of the headphone. Our brains use the fact that the speed of sound is kind of slow, and so sound arrives at either ear at different times, to isolate positional audio. Virtual surround sound uses that to emulate the same thing and trick your brain into thinking it's from a particular location.

HyperX gaming headsets are the best out there for a good price. Still use my cloud 2. Not looking to change soon.

Personally, I use my Bose QC25 and freestanding mic for my gaming and teamspeak etc. Since I live near other people, it's nice to have the noise cancelling and people always comment on my mic quality being amazing

Finally someone decided to put up the most informative video on headphones I have seen to date! Every video so far on how to choose a headphone has been nothing but a shit load of opinions on what the commentator and his buddies like. but I was still a bit disappointed about the video breezing by the "Real surround sound headphone" topic! u see I own a razer tiamat 7.1, and contrary to all the nay sayers, I learned through a little bit of an enthusiast curiosity that tiamat 7.1 are amazing and extremely under rated headphones. fact is that to date there are only 3 known real 7.1 surround sound headphones (5.1 claim they get more room for bigger drivers but their sound quality was poorer then Tiamat 7.1). Tiamat 7.1 being the archetype for the ASUS Strix 7.1 and G.Skillz Ripjaw SR910. Unfortunately for the other 2 Razer got it right the first time, while the other two face some serious flaws in their implementation. I have heard/read plenty of negative comments on the tiamat 7.1 ranging from, "it's bass is too boomy" or "earphones sound better then it" to just plain "Don't buy it!". But I did buy it and learned that those who left negative comments on the tiamat 7.1 either did not know how to use a PC sound equilizer setting properly, or did not read the manual for their tiamat 7.1 properly or simply too lazy to get their hands dirty on the PC audio setting interfaces. First, what is real surround sound headphone compared to virtual surround sound headphone? a real surround sound headphone as explained in the video is a headphone that has separate audio channels for drivers in the ear piece of the headphone. for 7.1 each ear piece has 5 drivers making a total of 10 in the headphone, while a 5.1 contains 4 in each ear piece for a grand total of 8 drivers. which ever type u choose they will always have a pair of dedicated bass drivers (meaning those drivers cannot hit high frequency notes) while the rest can easily hit the full upper range of sound frequency. Oh before I get ahead there is another key characteristic of a true surround sound headphone that I should mention: They are completely analog! I am not talking about headphone jacks, I am saying no "dolby prologic II" (used in all virtual surround sound headsets) synthesizing and managing surround sound channels for it. so how do they manage surround channels? that is what ur motherboard sound chip and full PCI sound cards are for. Tiamat 7.1 was designed exactly for this purpose. Instead of altering and mixing surround sound output on a sub standard headphone mounted sound logic chip like the virtual surround sound headphones do, tiamat 7.1 specifically Demands it's buyers to be prepared to purchase a proper PCI sound card!Once u have done as instructed, u need to spend some time tuning the sound card and counter tuning the headphone volume controller and the result is perfect balance of strong bass, crisp mid range and clear treble! I bought tiamat 7.1 over the other two for certain design reasons: 1) ASUS Strix is the most user friendly true surround sound headset. by user friendly I mean it limits users to sound profiles that are preset on it's sound card box. Yes Asus Strix is Analog and has a sound card housed in a game console like box. In addition it uses an unorthodox HDMI plug on it's headset and a usb connecting the sound card box to PC. It does not have a software interface for additional options and is entirely dependent on that sound card box for input. If that box was broken that head phone will be no better then a massive paper weight. plus the lack indepth individual channel sound control made my choice of dropping it easier. 2)Ripjaw SR-90 is the new kid on the block, analog like ASUS Strix 7.1 but an even poorer implementation compared to Asus! If the uncomfortable head design doesn't get u the round earpiece turned out to be smaller then required and the drivers are crammed inside it in an arrangement that ruins the directional quality of the sound channels. 3) I chose Tiamat 7.1 originally out of curiosity. Ask ur self why a company reputed to be a top gamer choice brand would implement something that sounds like shit? I first plugged it into an onboard sound card and it proved everyone who talked trash about it right! It literally sounded like my fathers old analog radio! No matter what adjustments I did to the motherboard sound chip it did not sound any better. Then I followed the one instruction people have a penchant to ignore: "BUY A GOD DAMN PCI SOUND CARD!". I bought an old ASUS DSX and put it in my PC. When I fired up the headphone this time it was like fireworks in my ears! The headphones sound profile had changed instantly from absolute trash to platinum brand! ok I might be over stating it! but it's quality was miles above what it sounded like on an onboard sound chip. Turns out the onboard sound chips do not have enough power to overcome the driver resistance threshold (it is measured in Ohm with the symbol of Omega lets call it the ability to resist work) of each of the 8 normal drivers of the headphone, while the subwoofer drivers have such a low resistance that when the headphone is run on an onboard sound chip it is all bass! switching to a PCI sound card corrected that problem as they are powered separately by the power supply. With a little adjustment to the PCI sound card, the OS System audio setting and the headphone channel volume, It was the best god damn audio headphone I had ever used (not comparing it to the sennheiser audiophile headphones those things are for people with expensive taste in music). After testing the equalizers a bit I concluded that Tiamat 7.1 is an incredible audio chameleon. I had absolute control over how each channel would sound and each profile gave me a different audio environment in game. All it took was a little effort, getting down and dirty with the system settings, something that true PC enthusiasts are not afraid to do. The surround sound did give me that sudden on/off channel issue mentioned in the video but that is only in a couple of games so far, that problem may have more to do with game developers ignoring audio quality leaving it entirely to virtual synthesizing tools that have hardly been upgraded in the past 15 years! Even the Dolby Pro logic engine that powers all virtual surround sound headphone softwares has not seen an upgrade in 10 years XD. These softwares are prone to calculation errors that make virtual sound quality different from real sound quality. Compared to old games that had immersive 3D sound environments ingame showing their dedication to surround sound systems. game developers today have done very little work in improving surround sound quality and more often abandon it at the mercy of automated sound synthesizing tools in order to work on visual quality...and yet their games still get a mediocre rating....I wonder why?

Mom: Why don't you go hang out with the neighbor's kid? The neighbor's kid: 11:44

headset : I can dish out 7.1 surrounding!!! now it is chicken time!!! game developer : we only coded stereo.... headset : shhhhh.... go to sleep

Thanks, the Logitech will be the one i'll be getting, the mic is too good to pass on!

Buy from a real audio company, like Sennheiser or Audio Technica or AKG, not these wannabe companies like Razer and Logitech that have no clue what quality headphones or microphones are. Seriously.

Some where Linus is laughing at the sponsor of this video lol

i have lost count on how many times i tried to explain this to gamers i know and they just end up buying them anyway. Anyway, whenever i use headphones to game i use earbuds (can´t use full sized cans since i live in a damn hot place) some chinese brands have some budget beasts.

Rip linus

If you have open-back headphones, will it leak trough your microphone? So if you´re skyping will they here what you're listening to?

You call it surround sound, back in the 70's we called it Kunstkopf binaural sound created by the ZBS Foundation. It was the first technology of it's kind that allowed you to record audio in 3D so you would perceive the sound as coming from in front, behind left or right of you. No special drivers needed and worked great with regular cheap headphones. You can still buy their audio tapes today to check it out.

very good and informative video, awesome job dude!

Tek Syndicate...............that's the first thing i thought when i saw the ending.

The G4ME ONE headset at 6:15 (and its siblings) has a flexible mic boom, so while the popping and blowing sounds pretty extreme in the clip, it could easily be fixed by flexing the mic further away from the face.

I personally have G432 headphones, and I love them. It claims it has 7.1(not sure if it's real or virtual) but it works great, I'm sound whoring in games so knowing where the sound is comming from is important to me. It also has subwoofer, which I love, and logitech gaming hub provides great customizability options for my headset. Microphone is not as good, but it's OK. The feature I LOVE is "sidetone", which repeats my microphone input to my headphones with minimal delay, which is great in-game when I don't hear myself because my headphones have a great noise insulation.

That's why you should buy headphones for audiophiles

gaming with a pair of hd800s, nice nice my type of person, got a pair of hd700s myself hahah

there are three important things 1price 2 sound 3 comfort you can choose only two of them what would you do

meanwhile I'm using an old fatality/creative headset covered in dog hair, repaired with superglue very dated but still works. The beagle hair adds to the sound experience.

Currently, I'm using the Blue Mix-Fi (I bought them when they were called the Mo-Fi), and a Blue Snowball mic. I love the audio experience and the built in analog amp, BUT, the Blue Mix-Fi's have a relatively high amount of clamping force, and the ear cups are too small for me to use comfortably for hours on end. I am gravitating towards the SteelSeries Arctis Pro + DAC as my next headset, and keep using my Blue Mic as the primary microphone.

Wish I had watched this before flushing my money down the hole that is Turtle Beach.

I have the Razor Kraken and it sucks. The headphones sound ok but after a couple hours my ears hurt because the ear pads are round (they don't fit my ear maybe it fits very small ears). And the mic is just unusable because there are electrical feeping (?) noises that are as loud as my talking. Don't by it.

u said in the beginning that the surround sound often where bad in gamingheadsets, and i disagree, with my current headset i have never notised any lag, and i can turn around, and the sound follow smoothly, tyis headset only costs 70$ it has worked for 3 years before my sister broke my mic. but the video vas really exiting to watch!

What’s the Real Difference?

I use the Bowers&Wilkins PX, they are really great for music basically, but also very neutral and analytic sounding, so the impactful overall sound keeps me using these with a webcam microphone which is actually very detailed...

those hd 800 cost 8x the price of a high end gaming headphones lol

While multiple drivers may not work in headphones, companies like KZ are putting multiple drivers in earbuds and honestly they're pretty amazing for the price

Thank you for the good and easy explanations on the differences

NCIX? Thats what linus used to say when NCIX didnt go bankrupt

I just ordered some Sennheiser HD 558 for £60 I don't think i can go wrong (hopefully)

I thumbs up that you pointed out the BS of gaming headsets. You caught me unguarded by all the headsets on your head..... too bad I cannot click multiple times on that thumb up button. Great video! Great comparison of the headsets.

so youre saying that gaming headphones are fake

What are some good cheap NON-gaming headphones under 100 dollars?

wait you stuck a modmic on top of the HD800's grill? the fuck man?

as an audiophile gamer, here's a recommendation from me to gamers looking for headgear: For competitive advantage, get a headphone or in ear (IMO in ears (earphones) are the best headphones for gaming as they are the most isolating and imo work best with virtual surround solutions) that has an accentuated treble or a "V shape" - this is where footsteps are at. For specifics; look for LZ a6 Mini for a downpriced mid end, LZ a6 (non mini) for a flagship/high end, and for budget look for Tin (hifi) T2. Make sure to read reviews and forums on them as they may need additional ear tips and cables. For something closer to home, try the audio technica ATH m60x. Uncomfortable if you wear glasses, but without them they're super comfortable. If you dont get enough directionality, try dolby atmos. Dont buy into a device for it if you play competitive, unless you really want to If you want immersion, get something with a natural signature like the NAD HP50, Blon B8, Denon ah-mm400 or Moondrop starfield. Then add a surround device like a creative G5 or G6, or even better their new sound blaster x3 thank me later :)

My biggest issue with gaming headphones is the ridiculous emphasis on over-the-top bass. This is thankfully not as common now, but I'd like to be able to hear the details, not just have my eardrums ruptured every time someone pulls a trigger.

Very scientific approach and thorough discussion; well done, sir :D

I use the HyperX Cloud Alpha headset for $100. I'll admit, I don't know high end audio, but based on reviews and my experience, they're extremely good for the price. The build is especially amazing blowing out I think every other gaming headset from $5 to $1,000.

any gamer who has any surround sound settings on their headphones turned on is doing it wrong, the correct way to do it is to set the headphones & windows settings to "stereo" then enable either "headphone" mode in the ingame audio settings or 3D virtual surround if the game has that option

For £100, I think the HyperX Cloud Revolver is a must. Beautiful quality and the build is amazing. If you need a budget headset under £50, the HyperX Cloud Stinger is amazing too. Best mics in the price range.

I'm not much of a gamer but I am a music producer... The best headphones imao are the Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro. They are around 140€ and give the truest sound for me. No bs EQing going on there. The only downside of them is that the cable is non detachable.

Try Audio-technica AVC500 with FiiO E10K = Eargasm.

Very informative and well made great job!

11:48 headphone Man

Try the Plantronics RIG 500HX or higher. It's amazing in games like Battlefield 1 and other FPS's. My favorite so far and I've had mine for a year and they're modular and I do plan on getting the esports ear cups and the new wireless RIG 800LX