I felt that way too.

It's something I'd like to try but I feel like I'm really use to in-game sounds already that it will only throw me off.

Thanks for tip! I'll try it, and give you an "review"

Just add bass.

Surround sound in headphones is such a ridiculous joke.

No it isn't. Multiple drivers per ear is.

i use the gamecom 780, plantronics. it has a similar 7.1 surround sound thingamabob, and i assure you- it's awesome.

I take it you have never actually tried CMSS-3D or similar? It works.

Looks better, not an audiophile, so i cant say imo.

last time i tried some virtual surround thing, it was with my xonar dg audio card and it reduced the quality of the audio dramatically and just made it sound really echo-y. will give this a try and see if it works.

Tried it, it's neat imo.

Edit: After some time using I started to feel nausea, maybe that is just me

can confirm it's awesome.

probably just you feeling nauseous.

I've been using the Razer Megalodon Headset for about a year now. It uses the multiple drivers method to simulate 7.1 surround sound and has a button on the volume control that toggles between stereo and simulated 7.1.

From my experience, it's amazing. In Games like Battlefield it makes you feel like you're right there getting your ass shot off. In Games like TF2 it really helps as I can hear where people are coming from, and what's going on without having to edit any sound files.

The 7.1 doesn't work very well when playing audio that doesn't support surround sound though. It sounds all echo-y. That's where the toggle comes into play though. I don't know if the drivers allow you to turn it on and off easily like the Megalodon does, so not everyone might find it useful.

I suggest everyone try it out though.

Wow this is nice. I may have mis-calibrated though because my right ear appears to be having way too much fun.

Just downloaded it and tried it. I really dislike it, maybe it's just me, but it doesn't feel real at all, super fake and just overall tinny sounding.

2 driver headphones with a not shitty soundstage can produce positional effects just fine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA

But that audio was created to sound 3D. The goal of virtual surround is to make what would be regular audio sound like that video does.

game developers could implement it directly into games if they wanted to, which would render this useless. The problem is, they haven't.

That's not how it works for Dolby surround and my G35's. It simulates a 7.1 channel sound system and plays sounds through what ever channels they would play if a true 7.1 setup was present.

The only way audio sources with less channels get up-scaled to 7.1 is if you use Windows's speaker fill enhancement.

Binaural recording if anybody wanted to know the term.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_recording

I tried using the Dolby crap on my 780 and it completely ruined all sense of directionality by smearing things in reverb

You're right, I worded that wrong. If they took just plain stereo sound, there wouldn't be enough information for them to accurately place sound effects. So they take multi channel audio and use special algorithms to convert it to stereo while retaining directional cues.

Well this is not actually entirely true, because it stil applies effects to stereo sources, music for example. Though obviously this just created a larger soundstage (sounds like rubbish imo), it doesn;t actually provide any accurate directional info.

I literally can't hear any difference ingame. Maybe it's just not going through the Razer program, I dunno.

I've been using 5.1 audio for some years, I can't get the difference.
Also I hate synapse.

I have beyerdynamic dt 990 pro headphones with CMSS-3D from my soundcard (Titanium HD) and I can vouch it's incredible directional accuracy.

True surround sound is a joke, but emulated surround sound is actually worthwhile. Well CMSS-3D is, anyways.

This broke Mumble 1.2.4 on Windows 8 for me by the way. I couldn't hear anyone speak. Uninstalling it solved the problem.

I couldn't play music through the default windows media player after I installed this, it didn't shut down when I told it to go away so I uninstalled it and now the sound is back.

Did you change the playback device setting in mumble? You probably have to because of how the software works (installs a new "virtual" device).

Nope, I didn't do anything, maybe this fixes it. I didn't notice a huge difference in game anyway.

After installing it I didn't notice that much of a difference except it made my audio around 2 or 3 times louder. After turning it off, my audio levels are still much higher (and no, it has nothing to do with the windows volume). This is really annoying because it put off my tf2 volume, youtube volume and all the programs I use for playing media. Anyone else get this problem? do I need to completely uninstall the program rather than shutting it down from the processes?

Try going to devices and disabling the razer one

right click on the audio thing in bottom right, playback devices, right click on the razer surround device and click disable. Uninstalling should work too

I messed around with it and am not a huge fan. The demo calibrating thing sounded pretty good but games didn't really get any better. Worth a shot though since it was free.