4 THINGS for use with all gamers and uhh movie enthusiasts,
1)OPEN BACK HEADPHONES which are large over ears and comfy. 2)A QUALITY BINAURAL MIC that you can plug into just about anything without needing stupid uhh audio interfaces and preamps. 3) AVR receiver and speakers if you cant do that coz apartment just go with the cheapest nastiest soundbars they got or youre literally screwing yourself over. 4) a quality MINILED/MICROLED/QLED or LCD display TV panel as most monitors are greatly over priced and underwhelming in specs features and importantly size compared to some of the cheapest TV's and often come in the same or similar sizes but the monitors FEEL the illusion of higher quality due to higher pixel density at smaller physical sizes or advertising gimmicks to hide how terrifyingly terribly worse they are.
firstly a great pair of affordable headphones that are super high quality audiophile and a headphone amplifier. When you watch movies or game at night hear it clearly but make sure they're OPEN BACK so if the door bell rings or your cat is fighting an army of dog sized possums and lizards and ankle sized terriers you can hear it to know it maybe got outside a window somehow and you have to buy new flyscreens again! and to get the animal back in the house at night. Too many people use the **bleep**tiest fake gaming headphones for sky high prices, that have the **bleep**tiest microphones in the universe. So buy a nice pair of headphones and amplifier to drive them. So your family and pets dont stop existing coz you cant hear them and your post man can give you things or your pizza guy can hand you a pizza make sure they're something great like HIFIMAN SUNDARA or at least a deva pro maybe? paired with some affordable headphone amp or the tiniest cheapest speaker amp as hifiman are kinda literally speakers for your head and most amplifiers dont do the swing voltage and peak voltage and amps and and 5watts RMS they require unless you pour in some money but the advertised hifiman amps are a great choice or the CORRECT or supposed to be ONLY choice but might not have battery/portable/compact or affordability importantly and maybe you can get what feels 70% as good for 1/3 the price. So consider xduo or topping brand amps or similar hopefully and ideally anything with MQA on it. I used some replacement headphone cables from lunashops.com website or similar stores and sellers on aliexpress for gold plated 16core 7N purity OCC speaker wires as it feels lower latency and can feel crisper cleaner clearer bright treble tops on the vocals depending on what you plug into than the stock cable which maybe sounds more uhh 'real' but without enough POWER it wont sing. see hifiman.com
rather than **bleep**ty gamer headset mics or overpriced ones get a separate freestanding mic or desk mic or one you can clip on.
I have a 3.5mm stereo balanced input jack binaural pair of was it primo EM172 parts number prewired microphones which can go into the pink mic port on the back of the mainboard or into a go pro or many other portable camera type devices. I believe i bought from micbooster.com Its great for use with onboard audio or other stuff and its similar quality to a way more expensive 3DIO freespace audio binaural mic. But without that ear shaped box or stuff it sounds a fair bit less uhh in person or positional but still sounds 'in the room' and life like and great pitch and quality. In a lot of ways it maybe sounds airier or more open/roomier. But the 3dio charges a fortune for their enclosure the way speakers sound better with woodpanel subwoofer enclosure boxes. But as a poor disability pensioner brands and housings are an unnecessary luxury for a mic that could be taped under a coat or shirt collar or on your shoulders/back or at the side or back of a desk.
The third thing you maybe want is a good surround sound AVR receiver system if you live in a house. with some audio engineers name on the box for the speakers rated for like 60% or better sound reproduction. I went with andrew jones pioneer atmos speaker backs. And paired with a pioneer or onkyo system can sound pretty great without breaking the bank but you gotta configure all the speaker levels and distance and go through each setting have a listen and decide, does this sound better? YES/NO. speaker wires and cabling i got cheap enough from my local australian Kmart store and it sounded quite the fantastic or see dicksmith. When i purchased more expensive OCC speaker wires.. it honestly sounded a tiny bit worse like uhh normalizer or DRC was disabled. I think just because its affordable doesnt mean its bad speaker wires by any means. Personally i love the old synth keyboards and stage performance sounds of the yamaha sound company and their stereo to 3D and surround sound upmixing is said to be the better of the common receivers I could ever hope to buy here in astrogaylia australia. But i've not been able to demo the different receivers in store and test which is better or best sounding. so its quite a shame. Pioneer is more uhh life like while onkyo is more musically beautiful in the budget speaker systems and sony is more uhh boomy cinema action movie sounding even with smaller speakers or TV speakers each sound company has a sort of uhh style of audio in their affordable budget lineup. If you live in apartment dont ever buy soundbars that say DOLBY ATMOS and DOLBYVISION save money get a cheap one and just use PCM. BTW samsung is more natural like documentaries and stuff of HDR tigers and bird calls and things pretty.
When buying speakers unless you are producing content and need to hear it AS ITS RECORDED with every imperfection crackle and hiss super exaggerated and flat and neutral (read:DULL and BORING) sounding do not automatically reach for studio reference headphones or speakers. They are intended to show the ugly in your works and reproduce them AS THEY ARE.. not how you WANT TO HEAR THEM or MUSICALLY beautiful pretty or ENHANCED or improved in any way. They are the default of defaults and often cheap because they're literally defaults and needed by industry in say a hollywood music or sound recording studio or a pro youtuber. DJ's are mixing stuff thats often already recorded and dont need to HEAR the differences between the same recording at different recording bitrates or formats and different changes in volume/content and playback devices and they can just buy REGULAR headphones that arent too EQ heavy or a bit on the neutral side as long as they're comfy and good at isolating sound.
Lastly make sure your TV has FREESYNC/VRR those are sorta the same thing. And check for the lowest input latency cheap HDMI cables tend to be as good as more expensive ones unless they special lengths or convert audio to optical just make sure it says 10k or 8k stamped on the cable and test that it can do what an 8K HDMI cable should do. Dolbyvision is cool but your AMD computer and GPU can output dolbyvision at ANYTHING and EVERYTHING.. same for RTX GPU's like a ps3 can RTX away like crazy if you tell it to just maybe lower resolutions but way higher render resolutions. So your TV NITS of HDR contrast and brightness in peak NITS or whatever the spec sheet says go for the higher ones, if you can afford it buy one with more dimming zones /backlighting panels whatever if thats still a thing or are they all miniLED now? the viewing angles are important and dont raise your TV up high it strains your eyesight. place it so your eyes are level with near the top of the screen and can rest or gaze direct at it or at a little bit down. Obviously not put your TV on the floor or a really low coffee table. you get the idea.
