5.1 surround sound through the controller

I was looking to buy some nice surround headphones and today there the Astros a40 Xbox one headset for 150 bucks. So I found out that they are not 5.1 virtual surround sound, only stereo. Does anyone know what happenend to Microsoft updating the controller for that. I read some articles that were 8 months old saying that they might do it.

Or is the whole virtual surround stuff bs and the astro a40 are good.......or any pair of headphones will do the exact same thing.

It's all pretty much bs. If you look at the physical connector closely you'll see there are 4 sections to it. One's a common, two are for right/left ear, and another for the mic. There's no 5.1 channel signal going to the headset. These surround headsets are just some software effects that output stereo.

@busterfriendly: so you think I should just pick up the headphone and give it a try. If I don't like it. Return it ? Leaving work so so I'll probably just stop by and pick them up. I'll have till January 15 to return it.

I have the PS4/PC A40 and they use virtual surround. Most all the virtual surrounds imo are roughly the same. The difference is in how the HP maker tailor the sound for their specific HP's...aka: EQ it, some probably use better quality hardware than others. There are true 5.1's out there but most reviewers and audiophiles disregard them because they use multiple cheaper speakers. Most seem to suggest to buy audiophile grade HP's and use Virtual Surround.

I have quite a few HP's from Sennheiser, Bose, Creatives..etc. For gaming I think I prefer the Creatives but they are some cheap feeling bastards. SQ wise, the A40's are just fine, the virtual surround sound is probably limited to your Xbox. I know on my PC with the X-fi Fatality audio card, the virtual surround on that thing is amazing and far superior to the audio on my PS4.

You answered your own question bud.

I thought the A40 were surround 7.1 (virtual) as well, don't think they are just stereo. My A50 certainly are, and they do not pass through the controller, they connect wirelessly to the docking station, which in turn is connected to the XOne through the optical cable.

Only reason I would connect my A50 to the controller is for voice chat. I also have the official stereo headphones, and there is no comparison to the A50 ones....the A50 is in a different league, and virtual surround makes a huge difference imo. From what I have read about the A40, they should work similarly to the A50, though I cannot confirm this personally.....but in terms of sound quality, I think they have an excellent overall reputation as headphones.....I almost bought them, I only got the A50 because it was the newer model..but from what I remember, from the research I had done, the A40 are nearly as good in terms of sound quality....I also like how you can customize the A40s, cannot do that with the A50s.

I got them and played with them for a few hours and compared them to my regular Sony extra bass headphones. They are really comfy! The ear cup padding is fantastic! My ears didn't hurt at all or even get hot. But no surprise, there was not even a hint of virtual surround. So... I had an impusle buy and purchased the Astros mix amp pro ( newest model) for 80 bucks. It was on sale on amazon. Original price. 130. Now to get my surroundgasum on.

Last gen I noticed a big difference in sound quality when upgrading to optical cables for sound, even though my receiver I often used a headphone jack with it for stereo headphones,, but for a long while I used component cables with the L/R audio RCA going to my receiver (my TV didn't have HDMI then), but when I used optical with my audio, there was a difference I noticed in the receiver.

When I use my headphones my receiver detects it and on the display it just shows two channels out for audio L/R, however when I did this while having optical in place it showed that it was outputting what appeared to be four speakers when I had headphones in, I'm not sure if was treating each headphone speakers as two channels but the sound definitely improved, the sound sounded less flat, there was greater distinct and dynamic sound differences between the audio sources.

So with regards to TC's headset in question, maybe it can mimic in some sense a surround sound experience. 5.1 might just mean it uses the full audio information in the sound experience, after all I hear those headsets get great bass, and the 5 sound channels will offer a great degree of dynamic range, even though you have two headphones it might do a good job separating the sounds distinctly much like a 5.1 surround sound experience.