How do I get my headphones to work properly with games?

[Omamder5]

I don't think this is a common topic, so I'll ask it here. I have a pair of Sennheiser HD 205 headphones, which I use primarily to listen to music, but I tried using them for gaming and ran into a problem.

Regularly, I would use my Turtle Beach P11 pair for gaming on both my PS3 and Windows 7 laptop, but they recently stopped working, so I tried using my Sennheisers before I attempted to repair the broken ones. Listening to music on my laptop is fine, but trying to play games, I get severe stereo playback, where, depending on the "direction" of the sound (in-game), either the right or left headphone will play the sound, and the other will be completely off. Basically, surround sound doesn't work, and it is extremely distracting to be playing a game and having either headphone go blank like hitting the off switch, and having this switch back and forth.

I tried fiddling with the "playback devices" settings in Windows, and apparently the headphones support "Surround Sound 5.1," with left, right, center, and both rears working just fine, but with no subwoofer in the visual representation. How come it won't work during games? My P11's worked just fine, albeit they had both a USB and 3.5mm jack, whereas the 201's only have the 3.5. What gives?

 

[BrightCandle]

The surround simulation is going to be provided by your sound card. Presumably that is the realtek onboard. You need to go into its drivers and set it up as headphones with virtual surround sound for 5.1 channels. Leave windows set to 5.1 as well. Then it will likely work.

The problem you currently have is because our sound card is only passing front right and left to our headphones and centre and the two rears are not attached so aren't played.