Thanks guys, my price range was about 200. So will have a look at the two things you've mentioned!
AKG K701/702 are lot cheaper than that and among the thop headphones for competitive gaming with huge binaural soundstage and neutral bass which takes back seat to details.
Of course that neutral bass can also feel "shy", so while it keeps foot steps and such details always very pronounced "fun factor" is naturally not so great.
Around that priced K712 adds fun above neutral bass to basically same soundstage.
Foot steps and such just aren't so easy to distinguish when there's low frequency sounds present, so while it becomes very good for gaming fun competitiveness is notch lower.
Beyerdynamic DT990 whose Pro version with coiled cable can be gotten very cheaply is very similar to K712 with well balanced between fun and competitiveness sound for gaming.
Its bass actually gives little more "fun factor" than K712, but with notch smaller soundstage it loses same amount in competitiveness.
Though still being far ahead of typical closed headphone for competitive gaming.
But if you have noisy environment then closed headphones are needed.
I was also think sound cancelling? Is this a good/bad idea with gaming??
Already closed design tends to be bad or really bad thing for being able to distinguish:
"Someone's coming closer from left behind... now he stopped coming closer and is behind moving toward right" or
"There's someone firing front right far away and someone else closer rear left".
Only thing closed design is good at is giving strong lowest "rumbling" bass and isolating noisy environment.
And with usually small soundstage that strong bass very easily badly overwhelms details like foot steps and such...
So can you guess does adding extra crud to signal fed to drivers to cancel outside noise make situation any better?
Anyway with just stereo/2.0 speaker signal from "stupid" single purpose DAC no matter how good headphones are sound is just:
"There's someone walking in my left ear... now he went inside my head... now he's walking in right rear" or
"Someone firing in my right ear and someone inside head"
Because with headphones natural bleeding of one channel sound to also opposite ear doesn't happen.
Some basic crossfeed can remove that unnatural inside ear sound, but any positioning is still just rather arbitrary "somewhere left - center - somewhere right".
While good binaural simulation gives besides 360 directionality also sense of distance if headphones have big airy soundstage...
In typical cheap closed desings soundstage is often at level of head inside bucket with sounds coming from that size space.
Since using Dolby Headphone in soundcards Asus has moved to their own Sonic Studio in both soundcards and integrated ones.
But heavy hyping of that graphical Sonic Radar overlay to show directions of sounds isn't the most promising for its quality...
Because with good binaural simulation and fitting headphones you sense those directions directly from sound itself, so why need for one?
