Sound stage vs Imaging

Hello everyone, new naive forum user here, and looking to purchase either the hd 6xx or hd 560s.

I’d like to know what people find more important for gaming, imaging or sound stage.

From what I understand, sound stage refers to the ability to create the area for sound to “exist” in, whereas imaging refers to the accuracy of sounds in said area.

I most often see people discussing the importance of sound stage in gaming, but personally I find that imaging should be more imprtant, in regards to knowing the position of where a sound is coming from; I am not so much concerned whether a firefight is in the same room or in a room far off (as i’d assume the game might adjust the volume of the sound as such), but moreso with where exactly spacially something is coming from.

I understand that sound stage improves immersion, but that is not so much my concern next to imaging.

I’d like to know if i have these ideas understood correctly, as I lean closer to the 6xx as not only for casual gaming, but also to listen to music, watch anime and in general have a long lasting, multi-purpose heasphone (though i am still heavily undecided).

Thanks in advanced!

From my experience, if you are doing FPS gaming such as CSGO then you should also pick imaging over soundstage and make sure you have insane amount of treble instead of bass. However, if you enjoy playing Fantasy rpg or say play skyrim then I would choose soundstage over imaging because it would provide you with more immersion from what I know of gaming audio.

This is a good video that goes over game audio GameFidelity:: A Guide to Gamer Audio Gear [Z Reviews] - YouTube

They are about even, depends on the game

this is correct… soundstage refers to how far away or deep a sound can be.

lacking soundstage, you could be outside a room and hear a sound but due to that lacking capability you won’t know fully where they are in that room… they could sound like they are on the other side of that wall but in fact they are at the other side of the room hiding, which can get you killed. Accuracy isn’t everything if the soundstage itself can’t even create the proper surrounding environment

if its primarily for casual gaming… soundstage creates a level of immersion to capture you in the world, for music its more of a large open theater type feel… 6xx is very very intimate but its also not the best one in that area for imaging that goes to 660s over there. If your wanting more soundstage though in a sennheiser… you should swing towards 58x jubilee instead… it has more soundstage and rather similar performance granted 600 series resolves better and just has a better quality of sound the 500 series has more stage, is cheaper, and gets most of the way there without burnin the wallet.

smaller fps best utilize narrow - average soundstage
larger fps average will work, large is recommended (these are games like arma, battlefield, tarkov, etc)

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I see, thanks guys!