Here’s something I’ve never understood.
There is an obsession with gaming headsets for playing FPS games to give you a competitive edge - helping you pinpoint footsteps and other sounds to figure out where your opponents are. This, I assume, comes purely down to how well the headset can recreate the stereo image.
Which is weird to me because headphones are known to be quite misleading re: the stereo image! As a producer, I would never 100% trust mixes on headphones and would need to check the imaging on studio monitors. If they are calibrated with something like Sonarworks, Dirac or Genelec GLM, the precision of the stereo imaging is second to none.
So for the sake of argument, is it true that calibrated studio monitors actually give you more of a competitive edge than headphones? Or is there something that I’m missing?
Headphones allow you to hear (if you play competitive multiplayer FPS) your opponents movements. If you listen for their location, you can react accordingly. This doesn’t apply as much to other multiplayer games such as MMOs etc.
For example, I wear headphones when playing Call of Duty but use speakers when I play League of Legends (unless I am using my mic).
I also use speakers when I play Single-Player games. Lately, I have been playing Cyberpunk 2077 and it’s way more intense when the music plays during an action sequence and my subwoofer is absolutely BUMPING.