Comments about Super X-Fi basing on music listening can be skipped.
It would be like complaining that saw is bad hammer:
Stereo recording simply doesn't have any spatial data what human brain understands besides left-right direction and no amount of processing changes that.
So that advertising of Super X-Fi for music has been really the least beneficial place to use HRTF.
Heck, pure speaker stereo sound mix from games doesn't even give proper left-right immersion when listened through headphones:
Headphones lack natural traveling of left side sound to right ear and vice versa.
Hence no matter how accurate heaphones are, that results in sounds being very accurately positioned either inside left ear, right ear, or in center of the head.
Simply because without any binaural cues brain doesn't know where else to position sounds!
Binaural recording is the proper sound format for headphone audio.
Wish more music were recorded in that format, because it's the closest thing to real thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpNtNCqP94g
(needs to be listened with effects/processing disabled and suspect those Astros aren't up to requirements of binaural sound)
Lack of DD decoding and console support is definitely one of the misses in SB X3.
Creative really bungled up their new product launches.
SoundBlasterX G6 with Super X-Fi would have been pretty versatile package for headphone users.
I wonder if they're going to fill gap between X3 and X7 with more higher end product including also console compatibility.
Also X3's headphone output lags behind SBX G6 with only 3V max voltage, which would be lowish for 600 ohm Beyers.
So SBX G6 and SB X7 are the options with both having optical input.
G6 having big price advantage and advantage in portable size.
As downside it doesn't cope well with multiple sound sources simultaneously and needs always that USB power even if you connect it to console using optical.
X7 again has its own power and can be connected to multiple source devices independently using USB for PC and optical input for consoles.
Creative's non-customizable HRTF is certainly better than average and overhyped Dolby Heaphone used by Astros.
(one of the oldest HRTFs intended to imitate movie theater's sound)
AKGs definitely have more clamping force than DT990 "Edition/Premium", because they rely on that to keep ear cups positioned.
And I'm no big person or with big head.
For music I would recommend minus 4 to 5 dBs to equalizer's 8kHz band to tame that Beyer's treble.
Though especially K702 wins in accuracy of sound reproduction being intended for very neutral sound for monitoring purposes.
But that neutral bass can also feel shy for that normal gaming and lacks good "fun factor".
DT990 again has good above neutral punch for balanced gaming experience.
If feeling that stronger bass bothers distinguishing details from explosions in competitive gaming, it would be easy to make equalizer profile for toning down that.
It's certainly easier and especially safer to tone down bass than compensate for lack of it:
Trying to boost signal or any part of it runs risk of signal clipping.
For simple example, if possible range of the signal is from 0 to 10 and you're trying to double signal whose value is 6, you won't be getting correct value of 12 but 10.
