Technology

PsykoWave™ Technology
Engineered for gaming: PsykoWave™ technology delivers the highest level of audio directionality and natural sound reproduction over any other 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound gaming headset.

This is achieved through a radical design departure from traditional surround sound headsets. Instead of using signal processing to simulate surround effects:

Five speakers are placed in the bridge of the headphone each in a precise location to create the correct timing and level differences to both ears.
Dual precision-tuned audio waveguides direct the sound from all speakers to flow past the front and rear of both ears, creating the same audio environment that exists with a 5.1 room speaker system.
To complete the 5.1 surround sound experience, subwoofers are placed in each ear cup to deliver the most dynamic audio gaming experience.

The combination of these three factors recreates, in miniature, the same things that happen with a room speaker system. There is no signal processing involved so there is no latency introduced, and because we simply recreate the natural conditions of a room in miniature the headphones will work for anyone, to the limits of their audio acuity.

To complete the 5.1 surround sound experience, subwoofers have been placed in each ear cup. The subs offer a solid bass that gives gamers a more immersive feel without interfering with audio quality. PsykoWave technology is the only technology to deliver a true 5.1 speaker experience in a headset, for the most realistic surround sound reproduction in gaming.

Surround Sound Basics
In a 5.1 surround sound system there are six speakers:

3 in front of you: front left, center, and front right,
2 behind you: rear left and rear right,
A sub woofer that can be placed anywhere (humans cannot detect direction of low frequencies).

Each of the 5 speakers is precisely placed around you to create a 3D sound field that makes you feel like you are immersed in a situation. In a properly setup sound room you should be able to accurately determine the direction that any sound originated from, but you need to be in the sweet spot – that small location in the room where all the 5 speakers are the same distance from you and perfectly tuned.

How We Detect Sound Direction
Psychoacoustic research has established that to detect the direction of a given sound we need to have 3 pieces of information of that sound,

The timing difference between each ear
The volume difference between each ear
The frequency modifications from it reflecting off each ear (pinna effect)

5.1 Room Systems
Psyko headphones effectively address the limitation of both room systems and traditional headphones, by designing a perfect sound room and then shrinking it down and presenting it in an acoustic headphone form. The main challenge in setting up a 5.1 surround sound system is the accurate placement of speakers and the physical dimensions and surfaces of the room itself. Even then, the resulting sweet spot is small and may not be where you are.

It is difficult to physically place speakers correctly and it is equally if not more difficult to control the inevitable bouncing of sound wave into walls, objects and each other, with the resulting echoes, dead zones and cancellation of sounds that reduce the quality of the sound. The effort involved in setting up a room correctly is far beyond what most people are willing to do. They will just live with diminished sound and be happy that it sounds better than the stereo they are used to.
The other obvious limitation is noise control. Our games are noise to anyone else not playing. A typical room system needs to be pretty loud to generate the feeling of total immersion in a game. If you live in an apartment / condo or want to play at night and still respect the people you live with, you’ll either need to turn it down or switch to headphones and either way you diminish the experience.

Traditional Headphone Technology
Headphones are just not designed for surround sound. They are not even designed to accurately handle stereo since left sounds are only played in the left ear, and right sounds are only played in the right ear. In normal room stereo, both ears can hear every sound with a timing and volume difference between each ear.

Competitors use DSP (digital signal processing) technologies attempt to compensate for the inherent limitations of headphones. Their challenge is that everyone’s ears are as unique as fingerprints and so are the sound signals each person uses to detect the direction of a sound. However, DSP solutions deliver the same signal to everyone. It is like selling the same prescription of glasses to everyone in the world even though we all need our own prescription. DSP methods are unable to accurately devilver all sound sources to both ears for properdirectionality. processing time so they delay the sound to the headphones and that reduces your reaction time and game performance. Psyko is the only technology that delivers the vital timing and volume difference to each ear to reproduce "true" surround sound so they sound natural to everyone, with no latency.

Psyko Audio Whitepapers

Read the in-depth white paper that discusses surround sound, acoustics, and PsykoWave technology here:
Psyko Audio Labs Game Headphones White Paper