Different Players Want Different Things
People love talking about “the best” gaming audio as if it’s a fixed standard. The best headset, the best earbuds, the best setup – etc, etc, etc! But that falls apart fairly quickly once you factor in people’s actual gaming habits.
Someone grinding ranked matches every night is listening for completely different things compared to someone unwinding with a story-driven game (or even dunking on noobs) after a long day at school or work.
They’re both playing games, but the role audio plays in their experience is not the same. Casual and competitive gamers actually want, and need, different things from their audio.
The Competition Junkies
For competitive players, audio is closer to information being critically relayed than entertainment. They couldn’t care less if it could be called in using two-way radios if it makes it more effective because to them, it’s just another input datapoint. All they care about are the cues: the footsteps that tell you where someone is before they see them, the gunfire that shows where enemies are (are they over the hill or around this hallway); the small details that help convey distance and direction to give the split-second advantage.
This is really all they need because clarity matters more than impact. They want clean separation between sounds, and their ability to gauge position in a 3D space to be accurate, and feel precise and consistent.
And if you are one of these types, you definitely don’t want anything getting in the way of any of that, especially not overly boosted bass or exaggerated effects that make everything sound bigger …but you lose out on milliseconds of detection because things have to “sound better”.
So if that’s not your thing, you might be one of…
The Casual Enjoyers
Casual gaming flips that priority. You’re not trying to extract every bit of information from the sound – although it can be a huge plus, and more on this later because you’re gaming for the experience. The world, the atmosphere, the music, the overall feel of being in the game. In this context, audio doesn’t need to be clinical, but enjoyable.
A fuller, more energetic is what casual players are looking for here so that explosions feel heavier, environments feel more alive, and the soundtracks hit the way they’re designed to do.
Now, this doesn’t mean that positional accuracy is not essential. Obviously, if you’re playing an single player FPS campaign and you aren’t able to enjoy it because you keep getting shot; or even if you’re playing online but just a bit more chill with your friends, you still need a good level of spatial audio capabilities in your earbuds.
That said, you can afford to have things a bit more comfortable and “cinematic.” Because you don’t really need the extra millisecond of advantage, though you also don’t want to be constantly merked either. What competitive players might call “too much” can be exactly what you, and the homies, need in your weekly sessions.
One Size Does Not Fit All
Where people tend to get it all wrong is copy-pasting recommendations without a single thought, or consideration on the end user who will actually use that recommendation. A casual player might pick up a very bare-bones detail-focused set of earbuds because they heard it’s “good for gaming,” only to find it sounds flat and lifeless for the kinds of games they play.
Meanwhile, a competitive player might go with something bass-heavy and cinematic because “studio reference headphones” and a DAC/AMP was what they were told to get, only to then struggle to pick out important audio cues during matches.
A lot of this is definitely driven by trends as products cycle in and out of the hype train. But if your priorities don’t match your preferences or use case, why should you go with advice that won’t fit you?
But here’s what most people don’t realize: the reality is that most people aren’t strictly casual or strictly competitive EITHEr.
You might play some ranked games during the week, then switch to single-player or co-op games on the weekend, and have a bit of retro gaming while you’re taking in a bunch of audiobooks and podcasts. You may have an overall preference, but your needs will vary depending on what you’re doing, or what you feel like having for the night.
The Actual BEST Setup
A balanced set of earbuds should be what makes the most sense – and we don’t mean “balanced tuning” either…
You need earbuds that are good enough to give you what you’re going for, but you also want it to cover the variety of gaming that your mind, body, and soul needs.
Something with good imaging so you can still pick up directional cues, but not so lean that it strips the fun out of everything else, and you want a good flavor of bass instead of just overwhelming ‘BWAAAAMMMMMMMM’.
Therefore, what you want is enough clarity to stay competitive, but enough weight and warmth to keep things enjoyable when you don’t want to go ranked.
At the end of the day, there isn’t a single version of “best” when it comes to gaming audio. There are some like the SANWEAR-GAMETYPE that can do both thanks to their companion app, the Soundscape, where there’s a game mode that has all the top audio cues amplified without making the sound quality horrible and a cinema mode where it’s all bass-boosted but the separation is still on point there – we got to try these out at PAX West last year.
But the real move here is going what YOU need. Competitive players optimize for information while casual players are all for the experience. Most people fall somewhere in between and we can imagine you do too (statistically, at least).
Once you figure out what your needs are, you’ll gain more clarity on what you really need to get the gaming earbuds for you. And then you’ll get to actually enjoying the games how you’d want to sooner, rather than stressing over what earbuds you should get.
But if you want some recommendations or don’t know where to start, you can check out our top picks for gaming earbuds here (ranked!).
