I ordered the Fidelio X2HR 2 days ago and I want to know how good are these for competitive gaming?
I ordered these because people said they were really good for casual gaming. I love to play games like Modded Skyrim, Doom Eternal, BF4, War Thunder, The Witcher, and some MMORPGs like BDO where I want to be completely immersed in the game world. I want the explosions to feel like explosions and the world to seem alive. So for that apparently these are very good.
The thing is, I also play a hell of a lot of competitive games; mostly CS but also R, etc. and am just starting Valorent. When I was looking for an all-rounder headphone ($200 budget) my friend brought these up and people online also said they were ok for comp. gaming, but now the more the look, the more I see to the contrary.
So my question is, are these really bad for comp. gaming or will these do the job? sorry for the long post
To answer the question, They are fairly moderate for competitive gaming but definitely not ideal and it has to do with the fact of them being bassy with not too much on the treble. They can do the job it’s just that in the case of Philips the shp9500 would be better due to less bass. If your on a pc you can get an equalizer program like peace apo and dial back the bass and dial up your treble to help out a lot. In most cases imo x2 hr is better than a shp9500 but in comparison the shp9500 is more neutral with a sharper and detailed high end which is very useful in competitives. Just in general you don’t want a rumbly bass in competitive gaming you would generally want the bass recessed with mids and highs being pushed to the front of the sound so you can hear footsteps and other cues a lot better. @Ark-Imperious Looks like ant beat me to posting the guide up. The guide below this post should help a ton to find out what your looking for.
I guess at this point I’ve already ordered them so might as well see how it turns out. I am interested in the equalizer part, thats the first I’ve heard of it. I thought you needed a dedicated amp/dac for that.
Nah, don’t need an amp/dac for the equalizer. I personally use Peace Apo. It’s two downloads one for Peace and the other for Equalizer APO which lets you run peace. Download the equalizer first then peace and it will ask if you want to download peace onto it click yes. In the settings for peace you will have to choose to download the driver software to whatever headphones or tv or whtever your using and probably have to reset the pc. It’s pretty easy to use and works well. If you just ordered them and they have a return policy in the case that you aren’t fond of them perhaps exchange them for the shp9500 then since it does better for competitives you may lose that super smooth bass but you can still tinker it to be better with the peace equalizer plus you save money since shp9500 is much cheaper anyway.
Theres the two download links for Peace. Another fun note would be Hesuvi or Dolby Atmos which allows you to add the ever popular “surround sound” kinda feature to any headphone. Works well without completely sounding like utter garbage like generally all the “7.1 surround sound gamer headsets” do.
I’ll give it a go when I receive the headphones. Once again, I really appreciate the info! My first time getting some serious headphones
P.S: I’ve tried two 7.1 Surround Sound headsets a friend gave me and both sounded on par if not worse than a used Monoprice headphone I own. You’re completely right in that regard. I’ll give Hesuvi or Dolby Atmos a try.
Sounds good, feel free to chime back in with results or if you have more questions.
This is honestly one of the things that used to bug me to no end. While I am by no means an avid supporter of the 7.1 surround sound Hesuvi and Atmos are a version of it that just sounds better. Not the best but its definitely for those who still want that more surround type sound. I don’t really think this is fully necessary for open back headphones however, to each their own. Hesuvi should be free IIRC and Dolby Atmos costs(it’s a higher end program after all) however it has a free trial to try it before you buy it which is a cheap, I think its like $3 or something, one time permanent purchase.
Thanks, I’ll report back once I get headphones and mess around with them.
Yeah, I just looked at Dolby Atmos and it looks incredible. I won’t get the full experience from youtube but it gave me an idea and $3 is really cheap, I’ll have to give it a go.
I think that people over-exaggerate that X2HR are worse than things like the Beyerdynamics for competitive gaming. I would just try it and see what you think. For me, I feel like I do just as well if not better with the X2HR than with any of my other headphones (not that I am playing at a high level).
This depends on how serious you are. If you were to sit and run a test between say a k702, ad700x, Fidelio x2hr, and DT 880 you would notice you can pinpoint the footsteps and other cuecards from an fps a lot easier on a k702 or ad700x than the rest of the bunch due to their recessed bass meanwhile dt 880 would be the most accurate while fidelio x2 hr would fall short. That’s not to say it’s bad it really depends on how serious you really are. The headphone is only going to help so much in game it’s not going to make you a pro.
Virtual surround sound I find only succeed in games where their sound engine sucks. Most games these days like battlefield , overwatch, siege, valorant have good enough sound engines that virtual surround sound has the potential to negatively affect the sound because the sound engine is doing virtual surround sound all on it’s own . But sound performance I feel is an overstated part of a game. Sound can only take you so far if you can hear a dude doesn’t mean he can’t hear you and flick faster than you. How good your mouse skills and overall game sense is much more important.
Yep, and for that exact reasoning is why I said I am not the avid supporter of the virtual surround experience. It’s nice to have, just not the greatest thing imo.
So in what games do you think surround sound will enhance the experience? I know Skyrim is pretty old game with an even older game engine, would it benefit or is that also too recent?
Lots of single player games. Maybe csgo , probably fortnite that games sound engin is awful not sure if they fixed it by now haven’t played in like 2 years. Any game you think it benefits you personally I would use it on. Just hop I to a game with it on or off and if you think it helps use it. For me that shit don’t work well most of the time