There are still a lot of PC gamers out there, and many of them rely on headphones to get their gaming done, often at night when other people in the house are trying to sleep. While we have no problem with two channel sound, surround is almost always preferable, and accessory maker Razer has made something just for that.
Built as an extension to a sound driver, Razer Surround is the company’s new product that will make any set of stereo headphones feel like it’s sitting within a 7.1 soundscape.
The program acts like a sound card, but unlike the USB accessories that often come with gaming headphones, doesn’t actually require the physical accessory, and will fake the surround sound after calibrating for the pair of headphones you plug in.
Razer’s Surround is a Windows only thing, though, so Mac users will miss out on this one. While some might argue with that, one thing you can’t argue with is the price: free.
In fact, that price will hold for the next few months until January 1, 2014, whereby Razer Surround will become $20. Until that time, though, it’s free, with Razer asking gamers who like the program to make a donation to the Child’s Play charity, which raises money for kids in hospitals around to world to have toys and video games.
“With the individual calibration of Razer Surround, we’re setting a new standard in 7.1 virtual surround sound,” said Razer’s Min-Liang Tan, Co-founder, CEO and Creative Director.
“We’re a big believer of giving back to our fans and the gaming community, and making Razer Surround available free with a donation to Child’s Play in 2013 is a testament of our commitment to giving back to current and future gamers of the world.”
The program is available now from Razer’s website and will work on any Windows operating system from Windows Vista and above (that means it works with 7 and 8, sorry XP users), and will require 100MB of space.
tried it, seemed to make no noticeable effect on ordinary headphones.