I mostly play open world games such as the Horizon series, The Elder Scrolls series, God of War, Assassin’s Creed, etc. You get the picture.

I have used consumer grade PAs (colloquially “speakers”), studio monitors, in-ear headphones and now, finally, I am trying out over-ear headphones.

I don’t remember what PAs I used to use, but my studio monitors were the German Adam A5X. Gaming with these, I could feel the ambience, soundtrack or whatever sound resonating in my chest. Boss battles were intimidating on a new level. The A5Xs are now “retired”, working part-time for my pseudo home theater (just an old T480 - connected to a TV - being used as a media player to play back Linux ISOs that reside on my server). The in-ear headphones were the, again, German Sennheiser IE-900. The sound was out of this world. At least the balance. The immersion level of any game just skyrocketed. But the immersion was somehow limited or confined to my ears or to their immediate surroundings. Now, finally, I am gaming with the, yet again, German over-ear headphones DT 700 PRO X of beyerdynamics. The sound quality of the Adam A5X and the immersion of the Sennheiser IE-900 are all there, but instead of being limited to my ears, it’s like the sound is perforating all the cavities in my head. I can taste the sound. The band or orchestra seems to be right there, behind me. I don’t think I will be going back to anything else. Hot damn.