A while back I bought a pair of the Medusa 5.1 headphones. Man, I really should have known better. 5.1...headphones... for $125? Including amp? Right...
I swear Speedlink (German company that made those headphones) must have paid off nearly all of those reviews. Either that or... no, no... that must be what it was, lol.
They are a decent set of headphones, but you could either A) spend less, get the same (or better) quality or B) spend the same and get much better quality. (Or you could be like me and spend even more money, and get a pair of headphones that will thrill you every single time you put them on, Beyerdynamic DT770
) Of course, I'm talking about a switch back to stereo headphones. FYI, word on the street is that most professional gamers use stereo headphones rather than 5.1.
I've used my stereo headphones for nearly every type of game (CS:S and FEAR included) and I must say the experience over 2.1 speakers is phenomenal. The "fear factor" of FEAR was literally increased by like 10x whenever I gamed with my headphones on. Positional audio is excellent. For example, there are several points in FEAR where you are in a pitch black area, the only thing you can see is fire around you on all sides. Well these soul type guys will appear suddenly and then come flying at you, hurting you (duh). They make a noise when they spawn, your only chance (besides luck) of being able to kill them before they hit you. With my headphones I was able to tell every single time where they spawned, and never get hit. When I just had my Logitech Z-5300 running in 2.1 mode, I was almost guaranteed to get hit a few times. 2.1 directional audio is horrendous compared to the directional audio of a good pair of headphones.
The only game that I can directly compare the Medusa 5.1 vs a stereo headphone is CS:S. That's a pretty good game to compare on, I'd say. When playing CS:S, my stereo headphones are way better than the medusas were. A key to being able to hear the audio clues that you want to hear is DETAIL, an area that stereo headphones have had many many years to evolve, whereas 5.1s are quite new, and lacking. Bottom line, I'd take stereo headphones any day over the medusas. The 5.1 just isn't convincing and isn't very accurate. There is evidence that the $800-900 5.1 headphones make vast improvements, but then again, that is coming from the same type of source that sold me on the medusas.
I don't have any models to recommend to you for your price range (sorry) but hopefully you realize that stereo is probably the better route to go. With that said, I suggest you head over to
www.head-fi.org and ask/search about gaming headphones. They'd love to help you, and I'm sure you'll get excellent recommendations.
