Headphones or Speakers?

tungsten on 27/3/2006 at 02:41

Quote Posted by theBlackman

You tell direction by the strength of the signal. If you have a sound in front (a dynamo as in THIEF) and a guard walking behind you the earphones don't give you the discrimination that tells you the guard is behind you and not on the other side of the machinery in front of you.

How does that work?
I have a soundsource in front of me. I turn (and the 4 speaker setup gives me the nice turning of the environment) to the left. The sound will now be loudest on my right ear.
And when I turn further? I hear it from behind and slightly lower.
How can you do that with a headphone? Is there a sharp drop? Or is it not getting louder when it's in front of your ear?

Also: with speakers you can move "your eyes in your head": you can turn your real life head to listen in a slightly different direction than "you look" (with your interface).
For me, it's 4 speakers (or 5 or 7 or..). Lot's better than any headphone I've tried so far. Maybe it's a question of training your skills in listening to a 2D audiosource with this volume-encoding of the position.

theBlackman on 27/3/2006 at 03:03

THE EARPHONES DON'T GIVE YOU THE DISCRIMINATION.

The quote says, "SPEAKERS ARE BETTER". Try reading what the poster writes.

Aerothorn on 27/3/2006 at 03:18

When I got my new computer, I went from using a fairly okay 2.1 speaker system (due to the way my room is set up, surround sound speakers are not practical) and got a Soundblaster X-Fi and a set of Sennheiser HD-555s (which I choose after extensive research, for their great quality-to-price ratio and their good soundfield, along with them being comfortable enough that I actually enjoy wearing them - I have them on right now even though I have no need for sound), recommended by many.

First off, I've noticed that most of the headphones mentioned here seem to be closed/sealed headphones. Obviously, yes, you won't get as good surround sound in them due to the restriction of the soundfield - open ones like the 555s give significantly better.

In addition, the X-Fi has CMSS 3D, which creates a full 3D sound environment with the headphones. I wasn't sure how well it would work until I manned an AA gun in BF 1942- I could always tell exactly which direction the planes were coming from from sound alone.

Whether this will equal a full 6.1 fancy speaker system, I dunno. But that's not really the point - at $120 for the headphones, it's far cheaper then a speaker system of equal sound quality, I don't have to buy speaker stands or trip over wires or set up my room, it's easy and efficient, and it makes music much better to boot. So personally, I recommend headphones as long as you get something like the X-Fi with good surround sound capabilities, particularly if you are limited on space, like me.

For more headphone research, check out (www.headphonereviews.org) or visit the folks at (www.head-fi.org).

Scots Taffer on 27/3/2006 at 03:25

I love headphones for the more intimate gaming experiences like Thief and so on, but it's not like I can't enjoy them on speakers. Maybe it's just because I was used to playing games on headphones late at night because I had noise-sensitive parents.

I'm currently playing games in the livingroom where my wife and little baby spend a fair bit of time, so I use headphones for the time being since I don't want to be intruding on them with IT'S PAYNE SCHOOOOOOOM kachowkachowkachowkachow at maximum volume. :)

However, for anything else - music, tv, movies - it's gotta be speakers. No doubt. Although I will admit there are times that I listen to certain tracks on headphones and am amazed at the nuances that get lost when played through speakers.

Aerothorn on 27/3/2006 at 03:29

Yeah, the bottom line is that you can get good sound equipment for cheap - I used a pair of $70 Dell speakers for ages and sure, they sound crappy if you put your ear next to them, you can hear the hiss and stuff, but you don't listen like that, and they really sound perfectly good. So it does mostly come down to preference.

Headphones:
+ Much better sound-quality-to-cost ratio
+ Take up MUCH less space than surround sound
+ If you go with sealed, they're quiet
- if you go with sealed, you lose soundfield
- need a good sound card to get real surround sound
+ more detail, better for multi-layered music
Speakers:
+ Don't have to wear anything on your head
+ will give you surround sound without a fancy sound card
+ can be heard by more than one person - good for rounds of You Don't Know Jack

So really, it often comes down to detail vs. the freedom of not wearing things on your head.

tungsten on 27/3/2006 at 03:48

Quote Posted by theBlackman

THE EARPHONES DON'T GIVE YOU THE DISCRIMINATION.

The quote says, "SPEAKERS ARE BETTER". Try reading what the poster writes.

I got that part. What I was wondering is, how does that "You tell direction by the strength of the signal." work. Obviously there are many here that can hear front vs back with this volume-interpretation of the front/back position (I couldn't).

I fully agree with the "Speakers are better part", but you seemed to be the only one that knows about what the headphones do... And obvioulsy they encode the front/back with some sort of volume? I was wondering how the curve (front/back-position versus volume) would look like.

theBlackman on 27/3/2006 at 04:18

Quote Posted by tungston

I said YOU not the headphones. In real life that's how you can tell. In games with earphones you sometimes are not sure, but with speakers you ALWAYS know.

EAX and other such are electro-mechanical (yeah I know. But let's keep this simple) attempts to replicate what the sound being reproduced would sound like if you were actually there and using your own ears.

If the sound is supposed to be behind you then the coding makes the sound in front of you slightly louder, and the sound behind you a little weaker. Sometimes it works very well, most times, with headphones, you only know it is behind you because there is nothing in front of you that should be making that particular sound.

If there is an enemy in front of you and one behind you both making noise, it is sometimes difficult to pinpoint the direction. It sounds like a weak echo if the sounds are in sync. Footsteps that are exactly patterened are a good example.

As for "seeing" the curve try a GOOGLE for EAX waveforms or some similar.

Aja on 27/3/2006 at 04:41

I noticed that morrowind has a subtle surround effect - wearing headphones, I realized that I could tell when a sound was coming from behind. It changes the frequency to mimic how your ears hear sounds in different places.. Aureal did it best with A3D: you could pinpoint sounds better than most 5.1 systems. Unfortunately I never played an A3D game that worked as well as the demo did.

tungsten on 27/3/2006 at 04:45

OK, my bad.

Aerothorn on 27/3/2006 at 15:06

What I can never figure out is what option to select for sound in games - there are so often so many, and since most of the options are set in my X-Fi control panel I wonder if if matters whether I choose EAX 2, or Directsound Hardware, or any of the 80 other options.