Gadgetory

this video is brought to you by NCI XCOM great technology selection and service hello everyone i'm dmitri with Huracan axe and today we're talking about gaming versus real headphones so let's begin now gaming headphones have this unpleasant reputation among the audio enthusiasts community because a lot of the time gaming audio products come with a lot of added value features that are just totally would be considered pointless by many which includes overly complicated gamer redesigns that are most the time just uncomfortable and don't add any sort of physical appeal to the actual design of the headset or the headphone lighting features which we've seen recently to be introduced which for consumer side is completely pointless but I could see why they would be appealing for competitive arena and eSports and you can check out our RGB conversation right over here and lastly a few gaming companies prioritize on different things things like 7.1 channel surround sound immersive gaming experience you know hear your enemies before they hear you and my favorite exquisite craftsmanship and fashion appearance know just know okay for that last one I went digging a little bit to just emphasize my point but why is it that when it comes to gaming audio product promotion it all sounds so surface-level and immature so I decided to do a little bit of research to find out how a gaming audio product would be marketed or sold to you versus a non gaming audio product and see if there's any similarities if there's any overlap and see if one category or the other has more emphasis on the audio and if you know what I mean you can probably guess which one that would be and so I've compiled a list of features that you are first exposed to if you were to buy their product based on the marketing material or just visiting the website and see how a gaming versus non gaming company is trying to sell you their product so for a non gaming company you're first presented with uniquely tune drivers with huge emphasis on telling you how their audio is best and this followed by comfort and something about the frame and lastly anything about the included accessories and this is based off websites from San Heiser AEG buyer dynamics great oh sure Audio Technica - and yes I've also visited the beats by dre just for fun you know how it is but when it comes to gaming audio products this is where things get a little bit interesting the number one marketing emphasis falls onto comfort which is explainable you know you're most likely going to be gaming for multiple hours at a time then surround sound gaming then design platform compatibility and microphone are in that last year and this is based off gaming products from Logitech razer corsair steel series kingston hyperx asus and the rock cat and so based on these two categories there's one particular item that stands out and that's surround sound gaming think about it for a gaming audio product to sell you their gaming Audio 7.1 channel surround sound is so easy to sell because it gives you that perception of directional awareness of everything that's around you and for for gaming stuff that's obviously very important in your mind but remember we have two types of surround sound implementations within the headset real and virtual so one comes to real surround sound this is when we're talking about multiple drivers on each side to be in charge of a specific audio channel so center side subwoofer rear channels and in theory working those all these drivers together in harmony to produce very nice surround sound because you have literally every driver that's in charge of each of these directions however in practice every single real surround sound gaming headset that I've tried have been absolutely terrible and disappointing because there's very little bit of harmony between these drivers so if you're in game and your character is rotating in theory you're supposed to receive sort of a three dimensional rotation of audio right no that's not the case what usually happens is audio channels are never working in harmony so you have audio popping in and out of each of these channels as you rotate and it's just unnatural sounding and absolutely terrible virtual surround sound on the other hand is done through the software side of things on your computer or on the headset itself where you have a stereo headphone so just one driver per each ear cup the way it's meant to be but now you're changing the EQ settings or the equalizer and you're adjusting the bass the mid-range and the treble frequencies to widen the soundstage which most of the time works really well to widen the soundstage so your audio environmental larger but you inherently change the way things sound so a powerful gunshot will not sound as powerful and punchy anymore but it will sound slightly more distant slightly muted and less detailed and this is where the conversation gets interesting of picking up non-gaming headphones for a gaming scenario if you want the best type of soundstage I found picking up an open-back headphone to vastly improve your audio experience because by Nature open bag design for the headphones means they enlarge your audio environment already which does not need to be simulated through software and game engines are becoming so good already that it's just so awesome to be jump into a game and feel like you're immersed into that environment you feel like you're there and you can feel the scale of your audio environment not just to the sort of the visual side of things but through the audio side of things as well but then you may be thinking that gaming headsets have the inherent better value because of the built-in microphone and therefore it's more convenient because of cabling stuff and just the connection is easier you don't need anything external microphone but from our experience only a handful of microphones in the gaming headset are actually decent so here's a sound sample from the son Heiser game one headset the headphones itself are based off the very popular HD five five eight and five nine eight button here the drivers are slightly tuned differently but they've added the boom microphone which is nice and clear it's detailed it's noise cancelling it's away from any breathing noise and some people actually gaining commentary are used for broadcast but this one's plugged directly into my motherboard so the sound is a little it's not the best because you can still plug this thing into a preamp to get the best type of audio quality out of the microphone but most people will be using their sound cards on their motherboards anyway so this is the best representation on what type of sound quality you can expect from one of the most expensive gaming headsets out there now we switch to the Logitech G 633 artemys spectrum RGB gaming headset the microphone is a lot further away so it's not picking up any type of noise or breathing material coming from the area but it's a very clean microphone probably cleaner than the game one headset because this one is coming from a digital connection so it's connected via USB and it's using its own compression and cleanup without using my motherboards clean up and stuff so it's a very good microphone as well one of the best within the gaming headsets that we've tried and now what you're hearing - is this still series and Sabir 200 it's one of the lower and gaming headphones but extremely popular within the gaming community and now you can see the difference between all these microphones this one sounds terrible and it's precisely why so many people tend to gravitate towards you know desktop solutions with a microphone that is returned it recorded externally so the audio it doesn't sound like and this is where a clip-on microphones are so important like the mod mic 4.0 which has a fantastic microphone capsule one of the better microphones out there for you know your gaming needs and you can actually use it for many other things as well it's got a very nice mounting solution it is quite expensive at the hundred dollars just for a microphone add-on but if you're you know already have a headphone and you don't want to shell out money for a gaming headset with a dedicated microphone this may be a very good solution alright so now let's talk about sound quality apologies for such a long build-up up to this point but this one's going to be a little tricky because we all like and hear sound signatures differently or like sound different sound signatures but the three main problems that plagues gaming audio are one overpowering bass that lacks any definition and overpowers the rest of the frequencies so that you just get mush the second problem is uncontrolled treble so uncontrolled higher end range where all the esses the footsteps and higher and other audio cues within the higher end range just become cringe-worthy or you may lack in the treble department so the entire audio frequency just loses detail and you go back to the mush thing again and the third is distortion where poor drivers cannot handle frequency separation and even add moderate volumes you lose detail going back again to the mush thing and so this is where non-gaming headphones really prioritized on those three aspects of tight bass that doesn't overshadow anything but still evident you can feel it but without it entering into the mid-range and disturbing any of those frequencies you have the treble extension which usually is what its diverse but you can have either a bright treble extension so it's quite fun it's emphasized or you can have more flat fixed treble extension but the most important thing is that none of those are fatiguing most of the time and that also is based on preference and stuff and the third one is distortion where good quality drivers handle volume output and signal output much better so they distorted much higher volumes or don't distort at all and I completely understand that the higher-end headphone category is completely intimidating because there's so many things to choose from so many things to consider do you like warm bass with very full body mid-range or do you like analytical sound signature where the treble is emphasized but the rest of frequencies are staying flat so this is where I'd like to get your guys's input our viewers to get a sense of what you gain with and to give your suggestions on certain budgets let's say under $100 and $150 plus for a headphone and a microphone combo and in the end of the day I really think it's comfort and sound quality that you should be looking at when choosing the right pair of headphones for you whether it's for gaming or any other use in our experience I found the game one in the game just the game series from Sennheiser to be really nice because it's based off the very popular and fantastic sounding HD five five eight pair of headphones from from Sennheiser they've just added a boom microphone there and I've also been really enjoying the Logitech G 633 because in sound quality and comfort department they're fantastic although they are almost kind of the definition of game or a gimmicky stuff with the RGB lighting and all types of buttons and the last thing I want to mention if you are in the market for a pair of headphones for gaming scenarios then perhaps don't get sucked in unto all the marketing BS that usually plagues gaming audio stuff and also if you're brand loyalty is diverse perhaps look into non gaming headphones first because they usually prioritize on sound and comfort before anything else that is on the other list and this concludes this conversation I hope you guys enjoyed leave a like if you did make sure to subscribe for more similar content and we'll see you in the next video oh my god I gotta take these off before I break some Jesus okay okay it's really the cabling that I'm worried about you know find a suffocated Demetri at some point nope all safe and sound