If you do any gaming on your PC, surround sound headphones are a worthy investment. Most gamers make do with a two speaker rig. Let me tell you what you are missing.

If you have a good set of headphones that have surround sound, your enemy is in real trouble. You will be able to hear them coming from a mile away and you'll know exactly where they are coming from.

These headphones are not for everybody as they can be a bit bulky and heavy, especially the ones with all the electronics in the headsets themselves. The effect is so uncanny, don't be surprised if the other players accuse you of cheating. Is it cheating to be using every available technology advance to our advantage? I certainly don't think so and neither should you.

I guess that some of you will want at least some technical details of typical surround sound headphones. There are some models out there that actually have discrete drivers for all the components of a full surround system. For those of you who are unfamiliar with surround technology, there is a middle front speaker called the center speaker for dialog. Moving side to side are the front speakers which output the normal stereo sound that we are accustomed to hearing. Then we have two rear speakers for the surround sound and finally a dedicated subwoofer for the lowest bass sounds.

 In some newer model headphones, all those speakers are actually present inside those large ear cups. If you take the cover off the headphones, you will see a center driver, a front driver, a surround driver and a sub driver. All these drivers are spaced apart so you get enough of a separation of sound to mimic the sound coming from a home theater loudspeaker system.

Do these surround sound headphones work? Yes, according to reviews they are very popular because they actually work very well. They are pretty heavy, though. To round out the package, most headphones come with a multi-channel usb audio adapter. This adapter plugs into your usb port and drives all the channels of the surround headset.