ASUS announces Strix 7.1 true surround sound gaming headset

[HEXUS]

Built with 10 discrete drivers, offers "precise positioning," of audio events.

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[Roobubba]

I used to be a huge fan of the original Medusa 5.1 surround headphones - they worked very well indeed. Since those broke (they lasted me pretty well), I've not come across any 5.1 or 7.1 headphones that have impressed me. I'd be really interested to find out how well these perform, not just for the surround audio (which would need to be spot on, of course) but also the quality of the drivers they're using.
The original medusa's didn't have great sound quality, but they did position very well. I now use stereo mixing headphones (Audiotechnica M50s) which are hugely superior in quality to every 5.1/7.1 set I've tried in the past, and I have no problem pinpointing enemies in 3D (I'm a competitive FPS gamer, especially natural selection2 and that involves a *lot* of vertical axis sound positioning in addition to the horizontal plane). I use them in preference to my Roccat Kone 5.1 headset, which doesn't offer particularly great 5.1 positioning, and has pretty horrible overall sound quality to boot.

So if Asus use good quality speakers in there, and get their software implementation right, these could be next on the list to try out when my now decade-old Audiotechnicas give up the ghost (seriously, these things are amazing).

Although you have to laugh at the marketing... how does the LED lighting help to achieve 'incredibly-immersive surround sound and precise positioning' and what the hell are '110mm PROTEIN leather cushions'?

[krazy_olie]

Sceptical about using such tiny drivers.

[tribaljet]

In all honesty, I don't really have much faith on 5.1/7.1 headphones/headsets since I don't find cue processing to work as advertised. I'd rather keep using my proper quality Ultrasones fed through a decent headphone amp and an internal DAC that receives 3D processing from a secondary X-Fi device.

About protein leather, that's basically artificial leather, also known as pleather. Different people take differently to pleather, I personally found them decent enough but it all depends on the pleather's quality, but even then I wouldn't trade my velvet ones for either leather or pleather.

Regarding driver size, it really isn't a be all and end all measure since there isn't a direct correlation between driver accuracy and size.

[xukex211x]

ive always assumed tiny drivers arent as reliable to be honest i prefere my turtle beach haha

[Goobley]

I've yet to listen to a multidriver headset that can offer any more accurate positioning than a high end open set of headphones. When it comes down to it, most directionality in games is done via very minor time lag and lead between the sounds arriving at each ear. Sure, fully directional sound exists and works well for speakers, I don't really think it translates to headphones though.

[aidanjt]

Good lord they're hideous.

[Taomyn]

"Built-in nose cancellation" - lol - I like my nose the way it is thank-you ;-)

[Noli]

Sennheiser HD558 (+also have a busted Audio-Technica AD900), both with v wide soundstage and X-Fi CMSS for positioning cues and works very well although I rarely play the sort games that need it these days...

[tribaljet]

I've yet to listen to a multidriver headset that can offer any more accurate positioning than a high end open set of headphones. When it comes down to it, most directionality in games is done via very minor time lag and lead between the sounds arriving at each ear. Sure, fully directional sound exists and works well for speakers, I don't really think it translates to headphones though.

Actually, positional cues exist and of very high quality on headphones, just that headphones positional accuracy is nowadays rather gimped due to use of flat 2d sound matrixes as opposed to full 3d audio pipelines like what's available on EAX (the audio renderer, not the presets) and OpenAL. I still blame Microsoft for killing hardware accelerated audio and paving the way for things like MSS and FMOD

[xslavic]

Good pair of Headphones,but to expensive.