How does a bass light headphone sound in vid games

Gaming Audio Competitive
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How does a bass light headphone sound in vid games//gunfight, explosion, surrounding, soundtrack and others

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Explosions will sound weak, some game music will suffer, but overall will be fine as most games do not use much bass.

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You will not get the oboes or tubas of the OST, waterfalls/explosion will not have deep rumble.

Apart from that, it is completly fine.

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What you using HD800’s?

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Theoretically - although not always in practice - a headphone that is less bass-forward will allow its drivers to be more free to reproduce frequencies that help with things like imaging and soundstage. The vast majority of headphones use full-range drivers. The busier those drivers are with bass, the harder it can be to get them to move well for middle and high frequencies. Generally, the cheaper the headphone, the more true this is. In competitive FPS games, less bass energy can be advantageous because the drivers can have more of their available “capacity” (for lack of better term) to focus on subtle details like footsteps, which could give you that last ounce of competitive edge. For single player campaigns though, deeper and more powerful bass can draw you into the story more, just like a good (home) theater sound system can draw you into a movie. Just to be clear, though, these are general trends that vary with price. There are of course some exceptional headphones out there that will bend these general rules to varying extents.

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6

If you aren’t worried about sound leakage then, could you pair openback headphones with a sub to get the best of both?

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This approach will make sound. In that sense it will work. There are at least 2 problems likely to arise here, though:

  1. The distance between your ears and the various transducers are very different. The subwoofer sounds will be reaching your ear much later than the headphone sounds. Messing with the time alignment that much could very well be audible and make things sound messy. The sub could sound like it’s always late to the party and stays around too long.

  2. Wave superposition. Unless you’re using a miniDSP or similar device that can remove the lower frequencies from the headphone signal, both the headphones and the sub will be reproducing bass frequencies. Combining that with the timing issues in point 1 you could get both constructive and destructive wave interference making some bass frequencies REALLY LOUD and others almost entirely absent.

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