Technically the successor owner of the gaming brand.
Epos has announced that it will be exiting the gaming headphone business and will instead focus on enterprise communications products. The company’s gaming products…
I never understand why we need gaming headphones when normal headphones already do the job well.
It’s mostly marketing and a built in mic. Ever since I got a mic on an arm and good headphones though, that’s all I want to use.
I personally just got a gaming headset for the first time. Before i had a cheap stand mic which due to space i had to place almost behind my screen. It picked up every little sound in the room. Keyboard typing sounds and mouse clicking were hearable a lot. Now with a mic actually on my headphones that issue doesnt exist anymore and people already mentioned that i sound way better. As for mics on an arm, do they need a lot of space?
They just clamp on the edge of your desk and you move them out of the way.
Because “gaming” headphones often aren’t “just” headphones. They are headsets with a built-in boom mic
And a boom-mic is often way better than a crap wire mic or bluetooth headphone non boom mic.
There are still the trash ones, but there are also very good ones.
And a built-in mic is extremely useful on multiple situations : console gaming, tight space gaming (no place for a mic), or when there is only a single port on a device (tho a splitter, or hub could be used for a jack port or usb). There is also the convenience of just having a mic.
The issue now with all these headsets being “gaming”, is because of the marketing.
Some headphones brands have put mics on theirs, to make them headsets :
Beyerdynamic with the mx300 : the tight clamp makes it a bit of a no go for me. The mic is as just between ok and great. The voice is full, but there is a lot of noise in there from the reviews I saw.
Audio technica : they have multiple of them. Latest one the ath-m50xsts. It looks like a circum aural headset, but is not. It’s a on ear headset with ear isolation like a circum aural. Which is pretty bad for me. Tho the mic is the best I’ve ever heard on a headset.
They are both wired only.
And other brands not marketing as “gaming” headsets are either extremely expensive with strange mics, or have most of their production budget into audio and they pair the headphone with a trash mic to make it a headset.
In gaming headset brands, there are multiple ones providing software, mic, and wireless features enhancing the experience of the user. For example low latency high bandwidth wireless (proprietary, wifi-like 2.4ghz) connexions only exist in gaming branded headphones/sets. (high bandwidth = higher than bluetooth for the same latency).
I’d take a proper lavalier mic with proper studio headphones over an unwieldy and crappy gaming headset with boom mic any day.
Or better yet, a proper THX reference level capable surround sound system and tactile transducers over any headphones.
Or even just dt-990s + modmic. Still better than any gaming headset ever built.
Sure with the budget, space, and maybe even enough noise isolation or when you can get open headphones…
But how much would a good enough studio headphone cost? Because from what I understand from studio headphones it’s perfectly calibrated headphones?
Now image your someone without the proper budget to get 1k$ headphones, and no space for open sound. what would you buy?
Maybe beyerdynamic? But for me the clamp force is too high.
Akg? They are cheap, but damn it was impossible for me to wear the akg371 as they were too shallow and had no protection for the driver plastic, and the way they were build made sure I had holes for the sound to get out…
Sadly audio is very subjective, on comfort, space, and sound.
RGB!!
More seriously, “gaming headphones” are almost always actually “gaming headsets”, ie they have a mic. Good music headphones without a mic don’t fulfil the requirements of quite a lot of gamers, and normal headsets are usually calibrated for voice and not immersiveness in games.
So they finally realized “Gaming Headphones” are just headphones, great. 👍
Can we have sound cards again, now please?
Not having to deal with a sound card driver anymore has been a highlight of my year. Just get a dac and amp
A DAC is just a USB sound card (unless you’re using optical in). But yeah, USB drivers tend to be more reliable since they are generic and usually not written by idiots.
Not really, no. You can use an optical or coaxial output from your mb as well and you don’t need drivers for that.
I personally love my X-Fi XtremeGamer and i’m not changing it for anything less than a AE-5 Plus.
As someone who just dumped their AE-5 I could not STAND the driver. Windows and Linux. Unless you’re running monitors by default, it’s not worth the hassle. The UI+driver on windows are just clunky, old, and have been the cause of a few BSODs over the years.
My x-fi xtremegamers been collecting dust since it got beat out by the schiit modi
Aside from the quality being better I don’t have to deal with that software that doesn’t know wtf a 2.1 setup is.
It wasn’t even Sennheiser, it was a company Sennheiser had licensed their name to.
It’s really unfortunate that Sennheiser has diluted their brand so much. Between this deal with Epos and their consumer division going to Sonova, it’s hard to tell what’s actually still made by Sennheiser. I imagine it will become more evident as Sonova starts designing new products and they start to diverge.
Literal decades ago I bought Sennheiser headphones. They were great. They later orders of magnitude longer than anything I had before. They fit well, and were foldable, making them very compact when not used. And they were cheap too.
When they finally broke down I naturally wanted Sennheiser again, but they referred me to their new brand Epos. I bought a headset this time, not just headphones. It was a lot more expensive, and I was terribly disappointed by the ergonomics. It’s also rather big, making it unwieldy when not in use. And they broke already, though I was able to fix it - they broke just out of warranty of course.
Of course this is just one anecdote, but it really does feel like another great brand sold out and became crap.
I’m amazed it took this long, honestly. These are like gaming chairs: overpriced configurations with a combination of features that result in lower quality/durability when put together. I switched to a separate desktop mic years ago (paired with a fantastic set of Sennheiser headphones, coincidentally) and haven’t looked back.
I highly recommend a dedicated mic. The low-end options are very affordable and you’ll still sound way better on Discord (or Zoom calls!) than you will on a gaming headset mic or a webcam mic.
There’s plenty of ease of use with headphones though, I got a pair of sennheiser gaming headphones and flipping up to mute is convenient.
yeah tbh I don’t think the comparison to gaming chairs is 100% there. Everyone can benefit from a better office chair, but most people can’t perceive the audio difference between a gaming headset vs dedicated audiophile headphones + dedicated mic. While it may be true that it sounds better, it’s just not worth the extra hassle for most people. I have a wireless Arctis headset and the ease of use is unreal.
Yeah. For a while I thought about upgrading to a desk mic and semi open headphones, but after looking at my desk, yeah, having a mic in front of me would be hella uncomfortable. Not to mention, I’d probably knock it over accidentally and fuck it up within a month.
I disagree, unless it’s the modmic, there are enough people who either don’t have the space nor want to spend the money to properly place the mic (ie as near their face as possible). I’d rather they use some mediocre headset mic then place something that’d be otherwise decent like a Samson Go on a tiny tripod on the table next to their gaming keyboard, 20-30 cm away from their mouth.
My snowball would like a word. If you could hear it. Over it picking up everything else in the room.
The problem with blue products, isn’t the quality but rather it’s the price, you can get so much more for the same amount of money as a snowball or yeti.
As for it being too sensitive, try turning it down andoving closer to it, or just using a noise gate, or even noise reduction (like rnnoise based or RTX voice). There are plenty of options for tuning a microphone for better quality. And you don’t have to go for the manufacturers software.
Personally I have a Audio interface with an XLR AT2020, and my noise gate and compressor plugin chain running on Carla works fine for what I have on my Linux setup, but you don’t even have to go that far. All you need is something like voicemod, voicemeeter, EasyEffects or noisetorch or other standalone setups.
I’d still like to move to a dedicated condenser on a boom, but at least for the time being, the PC37X I bought off of Drop like 6 years ago still sounds great to both my ears & the other members in VC. Granted, the unit is starting to fall apart now (volume-dial adhesive failed, raise-to-mute works about 50% of the time, etc), so I need to replace it anyway…
Reading reviews of the pictured model, apparently they sounded like crap?
I mean, they’re beautiful, and the magnet attached mic is inspired, but if they sound like garbage what’s the point?
