Will "studio" headphones do 5.1 or 7.1 sound?

[Raswan]

Probably stupid question: I'm in the market for new headphones, and I'm choosing between the Logitech G930s and the KRK8400s. I want to be able to game (20% of the time) and listen to music (80%). Will a headphone that has a single jack (like your normal headphone) do surround sound without any special configurations/sound cards/drivers? I want at least 5.1 to come out of them (this is assuming that I get KRKs, not the explicitly gaming headset from Logitech), and 7.1 would be better.

Or does it require a usb hook-in to do this, since you're transferring so much more data? The reason I ask is that most headsets designed just for gaming use usb or two jacks, whereas music/studio headphones use the single jack. I don't have a sound card, just onboard sound.

More simply put: Are the drivers running gaming headsets and studio-music headsets two fundamentally different ways of dealing with audio data?

Thanks for any insight you can provide on this.

 

[Cerb]

The Logitech cans have a sound chip, and a license for a Dolby fake surround implementation. So, no. However, you get the same thing with a sound card that supports Dolby Headphone, and then you can use any headphones with that. So, if you don't need the mic, you might still consider getting real headphones (such as the KRK KNS-8400).

 

[Raswan]

The Logitech cans have a sound chip, and a license for a Dolby fake surround implementation. So, no. However, you get the same thing with a sound card that supports Dolby Headphone, and then you can use any headphones with that. So, if you don't need the mic, you might still consider getting real headphones (such as the KRK KNS-8400).

Will my onboard sound support Dolby Headphone? Is it a mater of downloading some freeware and installing it? Don't have a separate sound card (and haven't since 2003), but I get what you're saying here.

 

[Cerb]

Will my onboard sound support Dolby Headphone? Is it a mater of downloading some freeware and installing it? Don't have a separate sound card (and haven't since 2003), but I get what you're saying here.

If it wasn't an advertised feature, no. Some do, but it's something you'd see on the box, if so.

If you want to be able to get decent fake surround through any set of headphones, Dolby Headphone is actually quite awesome. They did finally figure out methods to fake 3D positioning that don't only work for people with median ear sizes and shapes, and it takes surround as input, so no EAX or any crap like that to worry about.

The Xonar DG and Xonar U3 both seem to be good options, with fair integrated headphone amps (specifically, nearly flat response through the bass frequencies, a common issue for sound cards+headphones) and the U3 doesn't seem to have a significant rate of failures after some months (OTOH, the Xonar DG is cheap).

The thing going for a card and then headphones, if you don't need the microphone, is that proper studio headphones (with fairly flat response down to <20Hz, and no meaningful distortion) will grow on you for music.