Advice needed setting up Bass Management / LFE redirection for discrete 7.1 Headphones

[G Miura]

Hi there.

First let me say thanks to all those concerned for this application.

On a whim, I recently picked up a pair of Razer Tiamat "true 7.1" PC gaming headphones in a charity store. I normally use a pair of Philips Fidelio X2 for PC gaming use but had been intrigued by the Tiamats since their release due to them being the first discrete 7.1 cans and also the conflicting "they're great", "no they're awful" reports.

Once I got them home and hooked them up to my PC (Windows 10), I found the positioning to be surprisingly good in games and movies and the fidelity to not be nearly as bad as I had expected. However the bass is often very weak and flaccid in 7.1 mode (on the other hand it is just fine when set to 2.1 Stereo mode on the device's control unit) in games and the sound lacking in fullness as result. After some research online, it became clear from other users that bass management / "flex bass" / LFE redirection or lack thereof is the issue.

My discrete sound card (Asus Strix Soar PCIE sound card) does not offer such a feature. However, my Mobo's onboard soundchip does and if I hook the headphones up to that and tick the bass management box in the RealTek HD audio manager, the bass sounds as it should and the overall presentation in games sounds markedly fuller. However, the overall fidelity when using the onboard sound chip is noticably inferior in comparison to the discrete Asus sound card which I would prefer to use as a result.

A number of forum posts around the web suggested that Equalizer had proved to be the saving solution for them but I have been unable to reproduce their results using the instructions / config settings they listed despite quite some time spent fiddling with the various settings. How would I go about using Equalizer to enable bass management / LFE redirection and adjusting LFE crossover frequency?

I have 7.1 enabled in the Windows sound manager, all speakers checked as active and "small" (not "full range" although neither "full" nor "small" selection appear to make any difference to my problem either way), and in Equaliser under "more effects" I have 7.1 enabled and the sound card selected as the main device.

Many thanks in advance and sorry for the long winded explanation.