Your eyes can only see what’s in front of you, but your ears can let you know where threats are all around you. And when it comes to gaming, being able to hear an enemy sneak up from behind is a big advantage. So it’s surprising that surround sound isn’t nearly as common a part of the average gaming setup as, say, gaming monitors or TVs. Then again, the technology typically uses multiple speakers spread out around you to produce a directional effect. For PC gamers usings headsets, or even console gamers who simply don’t have the space for a full surround system, that’s a pretty big obstacle.
Fortunately, you can still enjoy the benefits of surround sound with just two speakers or a pair of headphones and a lot of audio processing. Simulated surround sound and spatial audio are increasingly common features on higher-end gaming headsets, but you can enjoy it on any headphones you can connect to your PC (or console) with the right software.
So whether you’re using headphones or a 5.1 speaker system (or more), we have everything you need to know about getting the best surround sound for gaming.
What Is Simulated Surround Sound?
Conventional surround sound uses multiple speakers (often six including a subwoofer, but potentially many more for a high-end home theater) to provide multiple outlets for different sounds to go through. If the audio signal of the movie you’re watching or the game you’re playing supports surround sound, it can send the right sound through the right speaker to provide a sense of directionality. That means the sound of something coming up from behind you will actually come from behind you.
Surround sound has been primarily channel-based for the technology’s lifespan, mixing audio specifically for a certain number of channels. A newer model, spatial audio (or object-based audio), is even more advanced. Instead of mixing sound into channels at the content level, sound is mixed around a 360-degree circle or sphere, with every audio source in the content precisely placed. This type of surround sound is more technically complicated, but it can scale to any size speaker system and supports height for true 3D playback that can come above or below you. Many movies are mixed with spatial audio for theaters and even home playback; Dolby Atmos and DTS:X are two such spatial audio technologies.
Most 3D games employ some form of spatial audio on the fly simply by how their engines work. The game engine determines where sounds are coming from, then mixes that sound to a stereo, 5.1-channel, or 7.1-channel stream. The problem here is that while downmixing all of those sources to a set number of channels is fairly easy, processing, rendering, and outputting a full 3D audio stream is much more processing-intensive, and the vast majority of games don’t bother going that route. Several major titles do support Dolby or DTS spatial audio in some form, at least for headphones (like Call of Duty: Warzone, Forza Horizon 4, and Borderlands 3), but most output audio entirely in conventional channel-based surround sound.
Obviously, the stereo drivers in headphones can’t provide the same immersive, directional effect as multiple speakers can, which is where surround audio processing technologies come in. Tech like Dolby Atmos for Headphones, DTS Headphone:X, THX Spatial Audio, and Windows Sonic take directional audio data and determine on the fly how to mix it best into the left and right channels of your headphones. It’s more than simply sorting out what sound goes into what ear. These systems figure out how to best pan and fade every element of what you’re listening to based on their direction to give the best impression of that direction to your ears.
This might sound like it just downmixes audio into stereo, and can’t give any sense of forward-backward direction. In fact, that was the impression I had of the technology for years, but after listening to it steadily improve, I can say that it really does make a difference. No, you can’t get the proper acoustics from headphones to let you really tell the difference between a sound coming from in front of or behind you, but with the right mixing, you can at least get a strong sense of it, along with very precise imaging from left to right. For first-person shooters, it can be a big tactical advantage.
It can also make movies and games much more immersive. Even without the acoustic precision of a surround speaker system, proper directional audio processing through headphones can really make whatever you’re watching or listening to feel bigger and more realistic.
Surround Sound With a Gaming Headset
Many higher-end gaming headsets offer built-in simulated surround sound. These headsets usually connect to your PC or console over USB, either with their own surround-processing sound cards incorporated into the connection, or with a token or code that authorizes the use of software that provides the feature.
This is simple, but device-specific, and can potentially be limited to channel-based surround sound if your headset isn’t designed for spatial audio. You plug in your headset (or transmitter if you’re using a wireless headset), and it configures as a surround-capable device. You might need to install a companion app to enable the surround feature, but this is usually a simple toggle, perhaps with additional options to let you tweak how it sounds for you. How easy it is to set up depends on the model and the platform, with PCs often requiring configuration through an app and consoles usually handling it automatically.
Surround Sound With PC and Xbox Software
If you prefer to use an analog headset or headphones with a 3.5mm connector, or simply don’t have surround on your USB headphones, you can set up spatial audio entirely with an app. Microsoft offers free surround processing with Windows Sonic for Windows 10 and the Xbox One X/S and Xbox Series X/S, or you can get a commercial app like Dolby Access, DTS Sound Unbound, or (PC-only) Razer THX Spatial Audio.
These options usually cost between $10 and $20 (not necessarily to download the app, but to license the audio processing feature). You might find them preferable to Windows Sonic, which we feel doesn’t sound as good as Dolby, DTS, or THX.
Our guide to surround sound software walks you through these options, and highlights the differences between them.
Surround Sound With the PlayStation 5’s Automatic 3D Audio
The PlayStation 5 is a unique case for surround sound. The bad news is that Sony designed the PS5 as an audio-walled garden, so you can’t use the same surround sound and spatial audio apps as you can for Windows 10 and the Xbox. The good news is that they’re unnecessary, since the console uses the company’s own Tempest 3D Audiotech spatial audio processing. It works with any 3.5mm headset plugged into the DualSense controller and any PS5-compatible wireless headset, including Sony’s Pulse 3D Wireless headset.
Which Simulated Surround Sound Technology Is Best?
All of these simulated surround technologies ultimately do the same thing, mixing directional audio to sound more immersive through headphones, but underneath what is pumped out to your ears are different methods that tweak how things sound. Those exact techniques are usually proprietary, so we can’t really perform a step-by-step analysis or contrast the technical details.
In terms of the end result and how immersive and directional the audio is when it hits your headphones, we can look at it in broad strokes. Generally, non-licensed headset surround processing (in headsets that have their own app or sound card, but don’t use Dolby, DTS, or THX technology) is the least effective. It clearly does some processing and mixing, but it’s usually channel-based and doesn’t do the more precise spatial audio processing that other systems do.
The exception here is the PlayStation 5 with Sony’s Tempest 3D Audiotech. Sony has put a lot of work into its 3D audio processing, and it shows. We’ve found that the console’s spatial audio is comparable with Dolby, DTS, and THX’s spatial audio.
That brings us to the pure software-based solutions: Dolby Atmos for Headphones, DTS Headphone:X, THX Spatial Audio, and Windows Sonic for Headphones. While Windows Sonic is free, we’ve found that it employs the lightest touch when handling directional audio, and its effects aren’t as useful or immersive as the other three. As for Dolby, DTS, and THX, they’re all excellent in their surround and spatial audio processing. Each technology is very effective, and can give a good sense of directionality through a gaming headset.
Surround Sound With Soundbars and Speakers
Headphone-specific spatial audio technologies best work with headsets, but the underlying technology can apply to speakers as well. After all, before Dolby Atmos for Headphones and DTS Headphone:X, there was simply Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, along with Dolby Digital and DTS multi-channel surround (THX Spatial Audio is designed specifically for headphones, and is only available on Windows 10).
Essentially, surround sound between your game console or PC and your speakers is much simpler to set up, but you need to have the right content and equipment. If your games or movies support surround sound in some form, that audio will be output in a multi-channel stream for your speakers to mix and place. If your speakers, soundbar, or surround sound system support that multi-channel stream, you’ll get the benefits of that audio. If not, you’ll get a stereo mix.
There are many possible configurations for speakers, soundbars, and multi-speaker surround systems, and any audio that comes out of them needs to be processed and mixed with the right configuration. Because of this, surround sound and Dolby Atmos/DTS:X compatibility, or at least multi-channel surround sound, need to be incorporated into the speakers themselves. The speakers need to explicitly support 5.1-channel surround, 7.1-channel surround, Dolby Atmos, or DTS:X for you to get much benefit from surround streams, because at that point, the mixing and output to each driver in your system is performed at the audio device level.
The Xbox One/Series X and PlayStation 4/5 can output multi-channel surround sound, and Xboxes in particular can output Dolby Atmos and DTS:X audio streams (with the apps installed and licenses purchased). Windows 10 PCs can do the same, again with the Dolby and DTS apps.
You’ll find relatively few TVs with built-in speakers that support Dolby Atmos or DTS:X, because for most TVs, the audio is an afterthought compared with the picture quality. Surround and spatial audio compatibility are more common in soundbars, especially those with rear speakers, as well as full surround systems (and virtually all modern A/V receivers if you’re going that route).
For more on how to enhance your gaming experience, check out our picks for the top gaming monitors. And to fully furnish your gaming den, be sure to read up on our favorite gaming chairs, gaming keyboards and gaming mice.
