[nlraley]

I'm getting ready to buy myself a nice Christmas present, and my fiancee should love it as well. I decided to alleviate her from my loud gaming and blu ray video watching and get me a real nice pair of headphones and mic or a headset.

I don't listen to a ton of music, my primary use is gaming, this is big, with some blu ray movie watching. Getting rid of my 5.1 surround sound and really want a nice headset to replace them.

So what would your recommendation with regards to what I should be looking at? I should be getting around $100 dollars from family and would be willing to probably dish out around another 50-100 on a set if it's really nice. So looking at around $150-200 or so, I might go over a tad if I an find a good deal.

I keep hearing a lot of contradicting responses to them, or at least with regards to 5.1, 7.1, or really nice stereo.

I am currently running on board audio, I will probably pick up a descent card before too long. I am wandering how much my on board sound will hurt if I go with a stereo setup that is normally recommended here, although my on board is still 5.1, it still doesn't lay a finger to a good dedicated card.

I've heard some descent things about Medusa, I hear TurtleBeach is really nice but I don't see any recommendations on here for them so no clue how they stand up to everything else on here. Would I be better off in my situation going for some of the ones that come highly recommended among other threads here? I ask b/c I really don't listen to a lot of the music so what I'd be needing is primarily killer for games and amazing for kicking back and enjoying a blu ray, and as I stated above not having a dedicated card atm really has me in a pickle as far as knowing which direction I should go.

What would you guys recommend? Thanks in advance.

 

[Alwinp]

I do not know if getting a soundcard first should be your main priority or not.
Basicly your going to spend alot of money on something that won't get to show its full advantage.

as for headphones, with your budget people are probably going to advice you the sennheiser 555's.

 

[nlraley]

I could get a pretty nice dedicated card for around $50-100, so it's not a huge issue if I need to slap one of those in. I'm assuming any 7.1 ss card would be a vast improvement over my onboard.

However, the surround sound headsets I have been looking at have a built in sound card, so not sure how those face up. That's really why I was asking around here to see what would give me the best bang for my buck for probably around $200 or so.

 

[meticadpa]

There's no question to this: For gaming, get the ATH-AD700s with a Zalman Clip-on microphone. Simple.

Surround sound in headphones is a gimmick. You should just get a good pair of stereo headphones, like I mentioned above.

http://www.amazon.com/Audio-Technica...0023987&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Zalman-Microph...0024005&sr=8-1

These two will be so much better than any headset.

 

[nlraley]

And any recommendations with regards to a dedicated sound card?

 

[nlraley]

Oh, and I know you guys have said that the good stereo headphones can more or less replicate surround sound, how exactly do you go about setting that up?

 

[nlraley]

What about the turtle beach ones?