Surround sound in small room

[slifer2790]

Wondering if it is possible to get descent surround sound in a small room. My pc room is only 9' x 10', which leaves me worried about not having enough room between speakers to get the effect. I'll be using these for gaming, mostly fps games. I've been looking at these -

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16836121006

If not, I thought about a headset, maybe this one -

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16826158075

Any advice would be appreciated, thank you

 

[JSt0rm]

sure you can. If you are trying to create surround for 1 chair its very easy.

You will just want to make sure those little speakers are correctly spaced in relation to each other and your natural ability to localize sound will work.

 

[0roo0roo]

I'd pick a different headset. That one is seriously over priced, its worth about 30 dollars.
headset is better for positional audio than surround speakers in fps gaming, surround home theater style is imprecise, its meant to evelope with sound, not give precise audio cues for location. and room interactions are too unpredictable anyways.
listen to this on headphones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA

 

[ModestGamer]

thats a awefully small room. Its not going to sound right with all the early reflection. Most likely better to use headphones.

 

[slifer2790]

Thanks guys, I'll be looking for a headset now. What would you recomend for fps games? I'd like to spend less than $100 if possible. I don't have a sound card, onboard audio from an ASUS M4A79XTD EVO mobo.

 

[ModestGamer]

any good set of $40-60 headphones is gonna sounds pretty good. I use sony studio monitor phones $20 at walmart all the time and they sound good. a bit bass biased by excelent detail and ear killing volume.

BTW set you gain to a comfortable volume first thing in the morning when your ears are fresh.. Do not touch it again. You'll make yourself deaf if you keep reaching for the volume knob.

 

[Patrick Wolf]

surround home theater style is imprecise, its meant to evelope with sound, not give precise audio cues for location.

I believe that depends on the source and speaker setup. If a game is coded to used 5.1 properly then it'll both envelope and should be precise on a 5.1 system.

And I'm just speculating as I haven't found a means to test it, but it seems like if there's no in-game option for stereo then you'll get 5.1 matrixed into 2.0 where directional cues won't be as good as a true stereo source like that youtube video.

I tested this with my own system using the Killzone 2 demo. Headphones (ATH-A700) were ok, but 5.1 sounded world's better in reguards to immersion and quality plus I thought provided much better cues and precision.

I also tested the Infamous demo which is a perfect example of why headphones can actually be worse as this game does some sort of manipulation to the surround material. The quality seems lower which is fine, but the volume is set higher so it's more pronouced. When you wear headphones things behind you actually sound louder as if they were in front. I don't like that they manipulated the sound, but because of it I could tell exactly where the sound was coming from in 5.1.