Calling ALL Creative SoundBlaster X7 owners, help a guy out, please?

[3MIX_Edge]

Hi everybody,

I made a thread some months ago regardng wanting to buy a new headset and DAC/AMP and the advice I was happiest with was to buy the SB X7 and the Philips Fiedlio X2 headphones.

Everything for the most part is sweet, for music and movies I'm hearing things I never heard before from my favs.

When it comes to games and BO3 in particular no matter what I do I just cannot hear footsteps, well wthout using "Awareness" (Perk 3), but I do not want to use that because I'm confident most X7 users do not need to rely on Awareness when guys using an Astro A40 + Mixamp can without awareness already.

I Google searched settings for the X7 and it actually led me to these forums where a user shared some settings but the thread was in German/Dutch, I'm not too sure but it wasn't English.

I followed those settings and have shots I've taken to show what I configured, not in the photo's but a step I took was to set the Cinematic to Full (Maximum) for the SB X7. I am also using DD and SBX.

I was hoping some of you with the X7 could help me out, please, it would mean a great deal.

Here's what I had set up.









Thank you for any help or advice in advance.

[antithesis]

I'm assuming you're buffing bass crossover to hear footsteps, but what exactly does it do when bass is minimised?

I don't touch bass in SBX, it washes out the mids and highs and the soundscape sounds somewhat muffled and muted. Surround and Crystalizer are set to default. I don't mess with EQ either.

[roads]

Serahc here in the german section there are great settings by Genitalien. You hear footsteps very well with it.

[roads]

http://xim4.com/community/index.php?topic=43556.25

[antithesis]

I think you meant page 3 for the link roads.

The settings are the same as the OP, except the dB Level is set to 0 rather than 6.

Anyone understand why Crossover Frequency is maxed while Bass is 0?

[roads]

No, lol, doest make sense but maybe it has to be so that it doesn’t crossover at all into the nothing?

[antithesis]

No, lol, doest make sense but maybe it has to be so that it doesn’t crossover at all into the nothing?

I figured out what it does...it makes the X7 sound farking sh!thouse.

Crossover does seem to help pinpoint positional cues by stripping every ounce of bass from the signal. Consequently, the game audio sounds paper-thin, but you can pick up cues pretty easily.

Knocking everything but 16K back to nothing on the EQ kills more than half of the soundscape by stripping all the highs. You might be able to hear footsteps, but you turn yourself half-deaf in the process.

And setting Crystalizer to 0 feels like I've shoved chewing gum into my ears.

You end with this awful audio environment that I can only equate to listening to an old AM radio. No bass. No highs. No life. Horrible settings. Might be good for KDR, but not worth the punishment to my ears.

[roads]

So whats the optimum then? Give us a setting.

[antithesis]

So whats the optimum then? Give us a setting.

Different strokes, different folks. It may in fact be optimum for detecting footsteps, but it sounds like I'm using $2 stereo earbuds instead of a $1000+ audiophile headphone setup.

I personally won't be using those EQ or Crystalizer settings - they make me feel physically ill. I'll try Bass @ 0 and Crossover @ 500Hz for an hour or two to see if it makes enough difference to warrant the degradation in audio quality. Then maybe wind it back until I strike a balance between positional cues vs comfortable soundscape.

Fun experiment.

[Update] Nup...can't do it...10 mins is my limit with those settings.

Tinny is the understatement of the year. It doesn't improve positional cues, it just kills everything else in the soundscape and creates this piercing, wafer-thin environment that is painful to endure because you need to pump up the volume to hear anything! The audio was so bad it put my aim way off.

I'll stick to maxed Surround, default Crystalizer, disabled Bass, full DD, disabled EQ. The sacrifice simply wasn't worth it, particularly given I heard zero improvement in positional cues. I'd rather tune into cues than filter everything else out, but it has given me something to think about.

[mikael]

can you please post those eq values because i cant tell what they are exactly by just looking at them. thank you

[3MIX_Edge]

can you please post those eq values because i cant tell what they are exactly by just looking at them. thank you

I wish I wrote it down, the software bugged out on my MAC and I lost those settings.

Sorry bro, but Scout Mode has been working for me when I put the sound up to 90%

[antithesis]

I wish I wrote it down, the software bugged out on my MAC and I lost those settings.

Sorry bro, but Scout Mode has been working for me when I put the sound up to 90%

90%? Wow. I have the same X7 + X2 setup and anything above 55% blows my eardrums out of my head. That's after working in nightclubs for 5 years in my 20s and picking up a healthy dose of tinnitis!

I lose details in Scout Mode rather than picking them up, so I leave that sucker off.

The only recent change I've made is adding the Acoustic EQ setting at 2dB. It roughly matches a chart I found in a lengthy article about optimising CS:GO audio settings.

[bagobones]

I wish I wrote it down, the software bugged out on my MAC and I lost those settings.

Sorry bro, but Scout Mode has been working for me when I put the sound up to 90%

90%? Wow. I have the same X7 + X2 setup and anything above 55% blows my eardrums out of my head. That's after working in nightclubs for 5 years in my 20s and picking up a healthy dose of tinnitis!

I lose details in Scout Mode rather than picking them up, so I leave that sucker off.

The only recent change I've made is adding the Acoustic EQ setting at 2dB. It roughly matches a chart I found in a lengthy article about optimising CS:GO audio settings.

Any chance you can share your settings. Want to experiment with different settings for BO3 COD and could use some baselines too start with. Scout Mode seems to work well but it doesn't seem to be that huge of a difference from previous TB headset. Sounds is clearer for sure, it does give me a better directional awareness and it seems to give me a better sense of distance so definitely an improvement. This is all with awareness and dead silence, the improvement for me without it seems minimal. The only thing that seems to lack is it being enhanced and more detectable at times. Maybe my expectations are a bit much in that regards but just trying to make the most out of the settings.

[antithesis]

Scout Mode is horrible.

The single best improvement you can make is heading to Cinematic and changing it to Night mode.
Set Surround in SBX Pro Studio to max.

The rest is really up to personal taste. I like the Acoustic signature in Equalizer, with Level boosted to 2db. Cinematic to Night mode, Surround to max, everything else set to default.

There are way to further enhance positional cues, but they make the overall soundscape sound flat, tinny and robotic. Od1n posted a thread with some positional cue settings that definitely do the job, but I bought an X7 to improve game audio, not to make my ears bleed.

[Heisenwood]

Scout Mode is horrible.

The single best improvement you can make is heading to Cinematic and changing it to Night mode.
Set Surround in SBX Pro Studio to max.

The rest is really up to personal taste. I like the Acoustic signature in Equalizer, with Level boosted to 2db. Cinematic to Night mode, Surround to max, everything else set to default.

There are way to further enhance positional cues, but they make the overall soundscape sound flat, tinny and robotic. Od1n posted a thread with some positional cue settings that definitely do the job, but I bought an X7 to improve game audio, not to make my ears bleed.

(sorry for bumping an old topic, but...)

Hi antithesis, my X7 arrived today and I've been looking at lots of different settings online. Pretty much everyone said to go into Cinematic and change it to "full", as apparently this is DD on the X7 end, however now I see you're suggesting Night mode instead?

What made you change to Night mode? Did you follow the advice of everyone with changing it to full initially, then you discovered Night mode and never went back?

Just looking to find the best overall experience for my new X7.

Many thanks.