Gaming Headsets: Myth, Truth and How We Test

1 - Einführung und Übersicht 2 - Alles über Schall und Frequenzen 3 - Räumliches Hören, Surround und viel Voodoo 4 - Sounding: Markting-Gag oder Skill-Verstärker? 5 - Menschliche Sprache, Tiere, Bewegungen 6 - Typische Kampf- und Transportmittelgeräusche 7 - Wie wir messen und urteilen 8 - Fazit und Zusammenfassung

The best is just good enough. This is not, of course, a new and groundbreaking insight, but unfortunately the naked reality again. If you also want to or need to pay attention to your budget, you will certainly be better off with headphones or headsets designed as linearly as possible, which have sufficient level strength and a useful settling behaviour.

Detailed reproduction and good spatial resolution, even with complex sounds and many simultaneous sound sources, are almost always more important than a (supposedly effect-having) illusion with surround playback. By the way, fine-tuning and adjustments are always done better with the equalizer than if you have to be set to a certain sounding from the outset and thus live immutably.

Good and usable headphones and headsets usually stand and fall above the price, because there are simply no miracle weapons for 10 euros – although of course I would never rule out one or the other pearl. You just have to look for them yourself or trust the right reviews. The marketing promises of the PR departments are a rather bad guide, so it is best to completely hide and read over.

The comparison between a very good dissolving headphones and such a sounding story with built-in skill amplifier is then also clear. While the jet on the left flies clearly structured over the hustle and bustle on the ground, the doughy and over-tested bass makes right of the ground fight an indefinable rumbling. The turbine noises get lost in a completely exaggerated whistle and the broadband air noises go down smoothly.

Where one can still argue perfectly with the surround story, because such a spatial sound illusion is always very subjectively shaped, only a clear thumbs down remains with the exaggerated sounding. The acoustic improvement by the targeted manipulation of levels of different frequency ranges finally belongs mothballed – zeitgeist back and forth. A lot of things are a matter of getting used to and education, but it usually also ends in self-deception, because after that many things just don’t sound the way they should.

Pc-audio is, as always, very subjectively executable and the listening habits and the support of the brain through a more or less pronounced listening experience a very broadly expandable ability. However, gaming headsets will never be really good all-rounders, and in the end, many gamers realize that you can drive much better with good in-ears or a decent stereo headphones with an external microphone (plug-in or as a table-top device).

Then you are also well prepared for music, because if we are honest – whether classical orchestra or Afghanistan and Taliban – the physical laws and biological peculiarities remain the same.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, the addition “gaming” is all too often used to either justify higher prices or to sell actually worse features as features. But there are also laudable exceptions that we want to find in our tests. Today’s little excursion is supposed to show that even games offer very sophisticated sound wallpaper and that the most inconsequential sound is more demanding than you might think.

As always, the rest is purely a matter of interpretation, marketing or simply voodoo. But we already know this all too well from other areas…