My Turtle Beach XP510 transmitter stopped working a couple of months ago. It's unrepairable, and TB want £150 for a new transmitter. That's more than the price of a whole new XP510 set from Amazon at the moment (£130) and I'd like something different. I got two years of quite heavy usage out of my XP510s beore the TX failed, so it's time for an upgrade. The problem I've found is that all modern wireless surround gaming headsets seem to be designed for PC usage, and have USB wireless transmitters. I have a very nice Asus Xonar sound card in this PC which I would like to keep using, and I'd been using the optical output of it and my Xbox to feed the XP510 transmitter through an SPDIF switch which worked really well. Are there any new surround sound gaming headsets which will accept a TOSLINK input on the transmitter?
Pretty sure the top-of the tree Steelseries Siberia headets take optical in, but iirc they're bloody expensive...
I hadn't noticed them, and wouldn't mind paying another £300 (which is what the XP510s cost me incidentally) if the things do what I need them to, are good quality and preferably last more than two years. Logitech, Turtle Beach and Corsair only manufacture wireless headsets which use USB TX these days. Just because the XBONE and PS4 support USB audio transmitters doesn't mean that they're the be all and end all of wireless gaming headsets. Why would I want something that requires me to unplug something from one device and plug it into another if I want to listen to audio from another source? It's retarded, I don't care how good the G933s are when you're actually using them, nobody should be giving Logitech £160 for wireless headphones which have no source selection.
The Siberia 800 series are the wireless option [the 600 are the wired ones with optical-in if you can live with wired ones]... You have the 840s, or if you don;t mind forfeiting some bells and whistles [bluetooth mainly] the older [and cheaper] 800s. linky EDIT: FWIW i've no idea if they're actually any good, they were just the only ones i could find that took optical in...
Wireless is a must, these are multipurpose and often used as home cinema headphones for watching media on my PC as well. The XP510s have Bluetooth and even though I haven't used it a lot for anything other than wireless Xbox 360 chat (it pairs with a module you plug into the controller) it's come in handy a few times for taking phonecalls whilst I'm gaming. So the Siberia 840s seem to fit the bill and certainly do look good.
"Gaming headset" implies integrated mic, spdif is one way stream (not to mention that it sucks for surround sound), so for it to work, you would need a second connection from headphone station to device in question - this is why its all USB nowadays. Also, last time I checked, G933 have "up to 3 inputs" - one USB and 2x analog (1 analog on USB adapter, other on headphones) and they can be mixed/switched as required.
It used to be the case with wireless headphones that the second connection to the device in use for voice comms was Bluetooth. I don't understand what you mean when you say that SPDIF sucks for surround sound; it is the industry standard for Dolby Digital on anything from high end home theater amps to PC sound cards. I am aware that the 933 can be used with two analogue inputs as well as the USB transmitter, but if I had it plugged into my PC and the analog signal (somehow) routed out of my Xbox into it, I would only be getting stereo sound from the Xbox. There is no option on them or any other headsets based on USB transmitters to switch surround sound inputs. The Steelseries Siberia 840 may be much more expensive but they also have many more features, and are a more suitable replacement for my Turtle Beach XP510s.
SPDIF sucks, because it can only transfer lossy compressed surround data (dolby digital). On a note of it being surround/stereo - majority of "surround" headset only have two speakers and use integrated DSP to get surround sound out of it (in fact the ones with multiple speakers and no DSP suck, because they are too near each other). Majority of sound cards/games/devices support this feature out of the box (Creative's CMSS-3d, Dolby Headphone (supported by Xonar), etc). Don't know what technology Xbox support, but Dolby digital requires down-mixing support, so you'll probably still get surround sound out of analogue out. Alternatively you could plug usb transceiver into you xbox and use analogue out of your PC. More than two channels for surround are really required then you are using external speakers.
That's an interesting point, but Dolby Digital is as good as it gets when you're talking about headsets. We're not talking about a 7.1 home theater setup with satellites and an actual sub here. When it comes to gaming headsets, Dolby Digital will always be the best you can get and IMHO is far superior to stereo. I've heard the virtual surround vs stereo argument before, and I've experienced both. My XP510s have a stereo cable that you can use to connect them directly to a device, and because the headset itself is still working, that's what I've been using for the past few weeks. The difference in the gaming experience both on my PC and the Xbox with stereo compares to virtual surround is night and day. The two games I play most are BF3 on PC with war tapes audio enabled, and Halo Reach on Xbox. The difference in surround vs stereo is really obvious, and I've struggled in Reach for these past few weeks without surround. I would choose DSP surround over stereo every time if given the choice. My old Speedlink Medusa headset which I played countless hours of CS:S with were a "true surround" headset with individual drivers. They were good for the time, but still not as good as proper 5.1 or 7.1 speakers. The Siberia 840s look like the perfect replacement. I can have surround sound out of both the PC and Xbox, remotely switchable through my existing TOSLINK switch and I even have more control over the EQ/presets using the base station. I also like the idea of being able to change batteries on the fly; one thing that always bothered me about the XP510s was that once they got low on power, the internal voice repeatedly said "battery low" every 5 seconds until you plugged them in, then you are left with essentially a wired headset whilst they are charging. It's also ridiculous to have the notification ever 5 seconds... I can't tell you how frustrating that is during a tense firefight, and there's no need for it. Once every 30 seconds would be fine. The Steelseries solution is much better and theoretically gives you non-stop wireless use.
Right, I might be misunderstanding something, but it feels like you are mixing stereo audio and binaural audio technologies such as Dolby headphone. Dolby digital means that they, most likely, will be using Dolby Headphone to get Surround data to 2 channels (virtual surround) for actual headset. Why is transceiver for you XP510 so expensive? Just speculating, but most likely because the DSP is in it. Headphones themselves receive only 2ch "stereo" audio. Your Xonar soundcard can do this processing on its own, you just need to enable it in settings and set the game to 5.1/7.1 audio. This way you can have surround sound even with the crappiest 5$ earbuds. In fact, whats the point of Xonar then you are using SPDIF in the first place (unless you onboard SC doesnt have one)?
