truth to be told, stereo is 99% of the battle when it comes to audio. imaging and soundstage play an extremely low role in gaming performance. if you take the best CSGO team in the world and gave one team a bunch of HD800S and an exact clone of that team a bunch of $10 stereo sony earbuds that you can buy from walmart, i would expect the hd800s team to have maybe 50.5% chance of winning.