Your gaming audio setup

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deactivated-5a923fc7099e3

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How do you listen to your games? Do you have a surround setup or are you more of a headset person.

I have a pair of yamaha studio monitors and a sub hooked up but when I game I usualy use a pair of open back headphones because they provide the best sound stage and they dont bother the neighbours as much. I would love to have a cinematic surround sound setup but at the moment I dont have the space for it. The few headsets with "surround" i have tried were all kinda bad.

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Justin258

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#2  Edited By Justin258

I have a pair of Klipsch R15PM's plugged into my computer. They're some pretty good powered monitors. I found them pretty recently in an electronics store called HHGregg just as they were about to go out of business for way less than they usually go for.

Everything else is plugged into a Pioneer receiver that I found on the open box shelf in Best Buy last year, also for way less than it usually goes for. I don't quite have what I want plugged into it, but it has two Klipsch bookshelf speakers and a sub that's frankly way too big plugged into it. I should note at this point that I don't have a particular affinity for any brand of speakers - the speakers and sub plugged into my receiver were Christmas gifts and I just happened across those powered monitors. At the moment, I don't remember exactly what model the receiver and speakers are.

It all sounds pretty good but I'm also fairly new to audio setups. Before getting that receiver, I just had a pair of those Bose companion speakers plugged into my computer and used headphones almost all of the time. I started getting into audio stuff because I was tired of using headphones for everything.

I'm also pretty tired of movies having really quiet dialogue and really loud everything else, but I'm still working on getting that right (seriously, I've been playing Dark Souls III and the voices are crystal-clear and I never have problems hearing them, why can't literally everything be like that when it comes to voices?). I need a center speaker, but I also need to make sure I have a place to put one and I need to find a remote for this receiver that actually lets me pull up a menu and customize everything and doesn't have a ridiculous price tag. The one I have just lets me change volume and input device, for some reason.

...anyway, yeah, that's what I'm using right now. When I need to use headphones, I just use these, which I've had for quite a while now and they haven't skipped a beat. I have an extension cable that lets me plug them right into the front of the receiver, so they get used for basically everything when I need headphones.

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GuitarGod

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I only have 1 surround system and it's not in the same room as my PS4, so just headphones directly into my controller or I just use the TV's speakers if I'm not playing a stealth or horror game

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LiquidSaiyan3

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My setup is pretty simple. For my living room, I just have a pair of bookshelf speakers (specifically the Pioneer SP-BS41-LR) to a receiver.

On PC, I've stuck with the Sony MDR-7506 headphones, mainly because I never could settle on a pair of speakers to get.

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TobbRobb

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#5  Edited By TobbRobb

I just use headphones for everything. Even my consoles are plugged into my pc monitors and the audio loops through the pc into the same headset. So I can play my console games while listening to GB videos or discord friends. I'm also just a massive pedant about input latency which is the real reason I don't use a TV....

As for what the headphones actually are. I bought the Qpad QH-90 gaming headset, because it's big enough for my giant head/ear combo and has pretty good build quality and audio as far as I can tell. Could probably do a lot better for audiophile purposes, but I'm not looking to spend a fortune. Apparently these are also just a rebrand of a HyperX headset with markup, so fuck me I guess. They look prettier so I suppose I'll take the hit.

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deactivated-64162a4f80e83

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This equipment isn't geared towards gaming as I also enjoy listening to music A LOT but I find you'll always do better getting audio equipment not 'designed' for the gaming market as you get way more for your buck and don't end up with stuff like over exaggerated bass and 'Surround Sound' headphones which actually distort clarity which is vital for determining the positioning of the sound as well as helping with immersion, nothing will beat true surround sound though (on speakers) but with headphones stick to stereo headphones because a good pair should be able to make something sound like it's behind you without resorting to gimmicks. If you want headphones for a competitive edge always get open backed if you aren't in the situation where sound leaking is a problem.

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Shure SRH 1540 - Headphones

Extremely light and durable headphones with incredible sound quality and impressive soundstage for closed backs. These are probably the most comfortable headphones on the market (that I've tried) they apply minimal pressure and don't cause you to sweat.

No Caption Provided

Chord Mojo [Headphone dac/amp]

A good DAC and clean amp is vital for premium headphones if you want them to sound accurate and want the sound to be yummy

No Caption Provided

Denon D M40 Amp/CD Player + Bower & Wilkins 686S2

Fantastic sounding speakers though I need to upgrade the amp so I can pair a couple smaller speakers to achieve surround sound. The Speakers are amazing for the price and I highly recommend this pairing to anyone that can afford it without necessarily wanting surround sound.

I've tried formatting this page a bunch, it aint happening :(

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BoboBones

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When I was a kid my dad had a 5.1 setup that I thought was awesome, then he switched to a Yamaha soundbar with simulated 5.1. I used simulated 7.1 headphones, (Turtle Beach) until I got my hands on a pair of these. I'm content with 2.1.

https://www.paradigm.com/products-archived/type=system-powered/model=milleniaone-ct/page=overview

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FacelessVixen

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#8  Edited By FacelessVixen

Just the Logitech Z313 system. It does what it needs to do.

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Lv4Monk

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#9  Edited By Lv4Monk

I use headphones for every single thing that lets me, and since I'm both poor and in want of quality I have a pretty economical pair of decent headphones. For consoles/handhelds I often send the audio through my PC for multitasking videos or podcasts.

https://www.amazon.com/Audio-Technica-ATH-M30x-Professional-Monitor-Headphones/dp/B00HVLUQW8

They were $54 at the time, maybe less of a value now. For the record I prefer blocking out as much sound as possible and these do quite a good job at that.

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NTM

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#10  Edited By NTM

Just prior to Christmas, I was getting sick of my older corded Philips 5.1 home theater system and how my room was set up since it has been like that for years, so I got the Vizio S4251w-B4 surround sound bar, which is great for what I need. It was cheap and it makes things a lot less cluttered. I love surround sound. I've thought about trying really good headphones, but I don't really like that it covers my ears since I still like to hear what's going on outside of my room. If I had headphones on, and they were loud enough I probably wouldn't hear someone break into my house and sneak behind me with a knife to cut my throat :P. Also, maybe it doesn't matter since anything over a certain level of volume can hurt your hearing, I feel like headphones would make my hearing worse faster especially considering I'd want to turn it up loud enough to drown out the outside so I could fully immerse myself, which is contrary to what I just said in the last sentence, but that's what I want with headphones.

If I had enough money, I'd buy a new TV and a new home theater system that supported the best sound, but as it is now, it's totally fine and I don't feel like I'm losing out on anything. The only 'problem' with my current set up is that to get the DTS from my system, I have to switch the optical cables out depending on which system I want to use. It says in the manual that you can get surround sound just by going from TV to soundbar, but I've read that you actually get faux surround since most TV's don't do real optical passthrough (in which case, I don't know if my TV actually does, even though I thought it did from the sounds of it). It is hardly noticeable to me honestly, but I ultimately decided to just go the less convenient way and plug in three optical cables from the systems to sound bar so I could get DTS. It's fine, it takes ten or so seconds to take one out and put another in. Something I love about my system is that it has circle surround, so it almost makes the lack of surround from things that don't support surround, like Wii games or Wii U for me negligible.

That means that I get crisp sound with what almost sounds like surround at times even though the system or game doesn't support it. With my old home theater system, Wii U games would sound much quieter but super base-y. Before it kind of ruined the experience of playing games on current Nintendo consoles, but now it's not really an issue and makes me slightly less disappointed that the Switch doesn't support it, though I think Nintendo really needs to get with the times and utilize better audio technologies.

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Slaps2

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Internal laptop audio, dawg. Repre-fucking-sent!

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zorban_zorban

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#12  Edited By zorban_zorban

I own a pair of Sennheiser HD 201 headphones. Really good sound quality for the price of just 25 quid. Use them with the guitar amp, too (however, in that case the quality is less then satisfying, very quiet sound and some frequencies are just cut).

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deactivated-64162a4f80e83

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@ntm said:

Just prior to Christmas, I was getting sick of my older corded Philips 5.1 home theater system and how my room was set up since it has been like that for years, so I got the Vizio S4251w-B4 surround sound bar, which is great for what I need. It was cheap and it makes things a lot less cluttered. I love surround sound. I've thought about trying really good headphones, but I don't really like that it covers my ears since I still like to hear what's going on outside of my room. If I had headphones on, and they were loud enough I probably wouldn't hear someone break into my house and sneak behind me with a knife to cut my throat :P. Also, maybe it doesn't matter since anything over a certain level of volume can hurt your hearing, I feel like headphones would make my hearing worse faster especially considering I'd want to turn it up loud enough to drown out the outside so I could fully immerse myself, which is contrary to what I just said in the last sentence, but that's what I want with headphones.

If I had enough money, I'd buy a new TV and a new home theater system that supported the best sound, but as it is now, it's totally fine and I don't feel like I'm losing out on anything. The only 'problem' with my current set up is that to get the DTS from my system, I have to switch the optical cables out depending on which system I want to use. It says in the manual that you can get surround sound just by going from TV to soundbar, but I've read that you actually get faux surround since most TV's don't do real optical passthrough (in which case, I don't know if my TV actually does, even though I thought it did from the sounds of it). It is hardly noticeable to me honestly, but I ultimately decided to just go the less convenient way and plug in three optical cables from the systems to sound bar so I could get DTS. It's fine, it takes ten or so seconds to take one out and put another in. Something I love about my system is that it has circle surround, so it almost makes the lack of surround from things that don't support surround, like Wii games or Wii U for me negligible.

That means that I get crisp sound with what almost sounds like surround at times even though the system or game doesn't support it. With my old home theater system, Wii U games would sound much quieter but super base-y. Before it kind of ruined the experience of playing games on current Nintendo consoles, but now it's not really an issue and makes me slightly less disappointed that the Switch doesn't support it, though I think Nintendo really needs to get with the times and utilize better audio technologies.

You can get active noise canceling or passive noise canceling within ear/closed back headphones with incredible noise isolation which means you don't need to turn your headphones up to unsafe levels. Also better headphones tend to produce very natural sounds where every little detail can be picked out at relatively low volumes and they dont spike and distort like cheaper models which does damaage your hearing.

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NTM

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@yesiamaduck: That's cool. I don't intend on buying any newer headphones anytime soon, but I'm sure in the future I'll look into it. I use Bose headphones and the only thing I use them for is when I want to listen to music and don't want to disturb or hear anything else but music.

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gundogan

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#15  Edited By gundogan

Astro Mix Amp to German Maestro GMP 8300 D with Beyer DT770 pads. The mixamp is flexible and the headphones are comfortable with the Beyer pads, isolate well enough and have a nice natural sound. And they are very durable.

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cool_news

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#16  Edited By cool_news
@liquidsaiyan3 said:

On PC, I've stuck with the Sony MDR-7506 headphones, mainly because I never could settle on a pair of speakers to get.

I would highly recommend MDR's for anyone looking for a pair of affordable cans. I had to buy these for some audio engineering courses, and ended up using them in-game for years. I think they have a very balanced range, while lots of other headphones I've tried just go for bass-porn.

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Sinusoidal

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Focusrite 2i4 to some Mackie CR4s and some Sennheiser HD 598s when quiet is required.

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isomeri

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#18  Edited By isomeri

Logitech Z-5500 for room 5.1 and Audio-Technica ATH-M50 for late-night headphone stuff.

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LeStephan

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#19  Edited By LeStephan

I LOVE my open backed philips fidelio II headphones (And Philips stuff usualy kinda sucks imo), best sound I've heard out of headphones that are less than 300 bucks and you barely feel the thing on your head despite it being huge. I had friends walk away with them still on their head because they forgot they were wearing em xD Dont expect the typical overdone bass you get from other headphones though.

Everything is plugged in a 'pioneer high power output stereo' which has an amp + double cd + recordplayer + double cassette recorder ( And yes, I guess I could actually record game audio on cassettes if I'd want for some reason xD) the amp is fine but my speakers arent the best, good enough for my 4 meter by 4 meter room though. Jamo CBR 70 are my speakers, no subwoofer. I've been told they used to be among the best preforming speakers of their pricerange in the 80s. They were 50 bucks a piece back then but you can easily find em 2nd hand now for 10 bucks a pair (Here in europe at least), they are most definitely a great buy at that price if you cant afford to make a lot of noise anyway.

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Dave_Tacitus

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#20  Edited By Dave_Tacitus

For the PC, a pair of M-Audio AV40s and a HyperX Cloud for headphone duties.

For the console a decade old Onkyo HDMI receiver (which spits out everything up to and including DTSHD and TrueHD, so I don't feel the need to change it) and a bunch of separates - Yamaha sub, Monitor Audio L, R and centre plus a couple of unbranded German surrounds.

EDIT - I live in a detached house out in the country so don't need to worry about neighbour-bothering. Everything goes up to eleven, which is the second mangled Spinal Tap quote I've done in successive posts...

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deactivated-5a923fc7099e3

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@lestephan: I did try the fidelios myself and almost bought them. They are great. Philips seems to be a top choice in that price segment. I was lucky though and found a pair of Sony mdr ma900 open back cans for about 100€. They usualy went for about 350€ so I couldn't believe my luck. When you spend more then 200€ on headphones you get diminishing returns when it comes to sound quality though. The sony's sound better then the fidelios but only marginaly. I would never have spend 350€ on them.

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Bollard

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Recently started using Sennheiser HD598s which are wonderfully comfortable (I've been using the HD429s at work for some time). I really want to get a decent amp for them though since I hate changing the windows volume constantly as it messes up the audio levels for Shadowplay recordings. Looking at a FiiO E10k but they've been hard to find in stock anywhere.

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LeStephan

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#23  Edited By LeStephan

@bdead: thats a really great deal!

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krummi

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Main focus is on movies so I have a 5.1 setup build around a Yamaha RX-V1800 amplifier. Up front is some Jamo towers and a Wharfedale mid speaker, surround speakers are from Paradigm and sub is from ace-bass (surely this can't be a real manufacturer name?). Console and PC are both plugged to Yamaha and everything seems to work fine - I do have a old arm chair that has wide enough arm rests for the keyboard so I just move that in front of the TV when playing with the PC.

I'm one of those people that can't stand headsets - haven't found comfortable ones in the past 20 years so just gave up on those.

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Moskelosk

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Audio Technica ATH-AD700X + ModMic 4.0 I use most of the time but I also have Corsair SP2500.

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zheelz

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#26  Edited By zheelz

@liquidsaiyan3: I have the sister pair -- the Sony MDR-V6's -- that I use for pretty much everything from gaming, to listening to music, to editing various media on my PC. I wear them for hours on end without any problems; they fold up quite nicely; the sound quality is balanced. They're great for pretty much everything!

As someone who likes headphones a little too much (not audiophile level, though), part of me wonders if I missed out not getting the 7506's instead. However, most of the reviews I've read of the two seems to state that they're both great regardless.

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hassun

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At one point I was going to try and get a whole receiver and speaker setup and such but then I realised I could only afford about 1 single speaker I relented and just got a 5.1 Logitech setup. The Z-5500 was very highly regarded but sadly no longer available so I settled for its follow-up, the Z906. I connected my PC and my TV and consoles to it. The PC itself also has an ASUS DX sound card.

It's good enough for me, the only downside is that for some games it can be hard to hear some of the more delicate sounds like footsteps. This can be a detriment in online games were such sounds are important (E.g Counter-Strike) so recently I've started thinking about possibly buying some quality headphones. I don't really like them but at the same time it would definitely help in some games.

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StressedOutCat

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I mainly use headphone, as got use to getting the clear sound directly to my ears with as little distortion or interruptions from the outside word.

I use a Creative Labs X7 Limited Ed, which connects to the PC, TV, consoles, mobile phones and tablet (including my Vita over Bluetooth). I like it for its sound quality and the ability to mix without the need of additional hardware.
this allows me to listen to all devices using one pair of headphones.

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whitegreyblack

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Both of my main TVs that are connected to consoles have sound bases in order to give me sound much more dynamic than what my TV speakers are capable of. My main TV uses a Precision Acoustics Encore 5, and my second TV uses a Sony HT-XT100. I like both - they were each had for <$200, have built in subwoofer so it's just the single box, connect via a single optical cable to my existing setup, and connect to my phone via bluetooth if I want to listen to music. Both also have a couple of various modes that are easy to switch on and off, which can boost the vocals or a different sound range if the game/movie need it.

When I play on my PC it tends to be late at night so I use my basic Sony MDR-XD200 headphones, which seem to do a good job. If it's during the day, my little Logitech 2.1 setup is a-ok.

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rocketblast0063

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PC: Stereo headphones.

Consoles: 5.1 Home Theater setup, you know, console -> hdmi -> receiver.

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Captain_Insano

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#31  Edited By Captain_Insano

I have two kids who are really young, so my setup consists of of a set of Hyper X Revolver headphones (which I lost the damn control switch for - damn you moving!)