I won't pretend to know a lot about headphones but i know what stereo sound is. Two channels of sound coming from seperate speakers. What that does is trick your brain into thinking the sound is coming from the whole space between the speakers. This kind of setup isn't best for 3D gaming when you want to hear things coming from behind you. i've never used very high end stereo headphones so maybe they do the trick for 3D gaming, but i doubt it. I've used the medusa 5.1 headphones (not the USB kind) and i was surprized at how well they differentiated the direction of sounds. Sound quality on the other hand i don't remember i only used them for a few minutes in BF2. 95% of the arguement going on here can be boiled down to personal opion. The ear works in crazy ways, one being that it's scientifically unexplainable how the ear can differenciate where a sound is coming from vertically but somehow they do.