Sound Blaster Z with decent headphone or 7.1 Razer Taimat for best positional audio ?

[shaolin95]

Hello guys!

So I am trying to decide between getting the Razer Tiamat 7.1 to get the best possible positional audio (I have the x-fi elite pro) or get the Sound Blaster Z which most people say has much better positional audio than the older x-fi series and any dolby headphone (which I hate) and pairing that new card with an Audio Technica AD700x , 900x or maybe a Superlux.
This is for GAMING only.

What do you guys think?

 

[Prey2big]

Apparently the X-Fi cards have better spatial hearing than all the later chips. And especially, I wouldnt dump an Elite Pro for anything in the world.

I remain very sceptical towards surround headsets regardless.
Also I would stay far away from "gaming" brand headsets, especially Razer's audio stuff (among many others).

My $0.02

 

[shaolin95]

Apparently the X-Fi cards have better spatial hearing than all the later chips. And especially, I wouldnt dump an Elite Pro for anything in the world.

I remain very sceptical towards surround headsets regardless.
Also I would stay far away from "gaming" brand headsets, especially Razer's audio stuff (among many others).

My $0.02

Where have you read about the spatial hearing vs newer cards? So far I have read that the new Z line has better surround than the old one but yes, the Elite Pro is a nice card for sure and I got it for $25 (no breakout box) so cant argue with that.

 

[lehtv]

I find spatial hearing with stereo headphones to be most accurate without any virtual surround effect muddling things up. Virtual 7.1 isn't even supposed to make you hear things from different directions more accurately, it's supposed to make things sound as though they were bouncing off of surfaces in a three dimensional space, before entering your ear. The attempt is to simulate what things sound like in the real world, not to magically make 2-channel audio function like 7-channel audio.

That said... from what I've read, the virtual surround effect of Soundblaster Z is very good (SBX Pro or some such), beats Asus Xonar or any USB headset based implementation. But think of it as an enhancement to game audio quality, not as a competitive advantage.