Our audio philosophy
At EPOS, we believe that excellence in audio completes the gaming experience.
To get the most out of the world's best games and experience their audio as the sound designers intended, gamers need devices crafted specifically for gaming by engineers with extensive experience of how human hearing works — and skills to develop the high performance designs and technologies needed to deliver optimal sound for a life-like experience. EPOS products are engineered for the ultimate gaming experience and for the gamer who demands excellence in all aspects of her or his gaming.
Our philosophy is to deliver the listener as close to a perfect, life-like audio experience as possible.
Hearing is a human sense that taps deeply into our subconscious mind. By understanding and appreciating the role sound plays in our lives, our engineers can focus on all the fine details that contribute to a great audio experience. The human brain remembers audio in a deep place, and our respect for that helps us develop products that make the audio experience complete. Hearing a song associated with sad memories can bring tears to your eyes; or perhaps you can tell just from the sound of the footsteps approaching around a corner that it's a close friend.
At EPOS, we call that the Power of Audio™.
How do we experience audio?
Audio is made up of sound waves created by vibrations, causing repetitive high- and low-pressure patterns to move through air or other materials. Detectors measure the number of these pressure waves per second — the 'frequency', a unit called Hertz (Hz). The human ear is one form of detector, and an extremely sensitive and sophisticated one.
The higher the number of pressure waves per second, the higher the pitch (and vice-versa). Our ears coupled to the brain can sense and interpret ('hear') pitches between around 20Hz and 20,000Hz (20KHz), which is why audio products are typically designed to deliver audio optimally within this frequency range.
The very lowest frequencies are felt, rather than heard: the slow, rolling vibration of an earthquake, the roar of a storm, or even the biggest pipe of a large organ, the fundamental note of which can register a stomach-churning frequency of 16Hz.
Bass is generally defined as the range up to around 150Hz. This forms the foundation of audio and is where many sound effects lie. Listeners often have the sensation they feel these sounds as well as hear them — indeed, below 20Hz or so the fundamental tone is felt and not heard. It's obviously important for gaming, but poor audio solutions often boost these frequencies beyond their headset speaker's ability to reproduce them, introducing distortion and smearing. At EPOS, we are careful to balance the bass you hear with the high-quality components required to deliver it to the ear, which is particularly important for high performance gaming. Esports athletes often EQ down the bass response because the equipment they use sacrifices clarity to deliver distracting and distorted bass rumble.
Reproducing natural audio across the entire audible frequency spectrum is what we focus on at EPOS to deliver the ultimate gaming experience — though it’s very important to note that the top line figures quoted for audio equipment such as the frequency range do not tell the whole story. Two different headsets may have similar stats but sound entirely different. For example, if a headset claims a frequency response of 15Hz – 29KHz alone, it is meaningless unless you know how reliably in that range it delivers a specific volume in decibels (dB). If it’s 15Hz – 29KHz (+/- 12dB) then some frequencies will be more than twice as loud as others, which will give unbalanced sound. Equally, you may have headsets that deliver a narrower range of frequencies but with much less variation of volume across the audible range and with lower distortion, which will generally sound much better.
Mid-range is from about 150Hz to 5000Hz. This is the range where the human voice resides, and natural mid-range frequencies are important if you want voices to be recognizable and words to be clear. Additionally, many sounds that arise from characters interacting with the environment sit in this range – movie “foley artists” often focus on the mid-range frequencies to give the sound of characters moving through an environment prominence.
At EPOS, we don't chase numbers, we pursue the life-like and natural reproduction of sound that the game's audio designers intended you to hear. We balance the performance of all our products across every possible measure, with the human ear as the ultimate judge of quality, not specifications or checkboxes.
EPOS is an audio company committed to the highest standards in gaming, and we bring with us, via our parent company Demant, more than 115 years of experience in creating state-of-the art audio equipment — since 1904, in fact. EPOS is staffed by audio experts with a passion for delivering premium audio solutions for gamers. At EPOS we combine this expertise and passion with a deeply rooted dedication to gaming to deliver the best audio peripherals that will allow the gamer to maximize his or her gaming experience. We spend a long time listening to our own products — testing, tweaking, and then listening again to ensure we adhere to our own high standards.
Treble runs from about 5000Hz upwards, with the lower range providing the crispness and clarity of sounds and the upper range mainly composed of harmonics that provide the brilliance and a sense of space. Many of the ambient sounds in games sit in this frequency range and add to the sense of immersion.
EPOS quality
Sound is interpreted by the brain and when it isn’t life-like — especially when there is distortion — your mind must work harder to decipher it. This can cause listener fatigue, even headaches, as your brain needs to work overtime to compensate. It takes away the gamer’s attention from what really matters: the game, the focus and the immersion.
It takes time and resource to design natural sound reproduction. At EPOS, we invest the days and hours needed for research, development, and meticulous testing to ensure quality products of the highest standard that deliver life-like audio. This quest for premium quality is also why we always design as much of the audio chain as possible ourselves, ideally from the moment it exits the game to delivery to your ears via our GSP series headsets — or external sound cards output in the case of our GSX external sound cards.
No matter how good our design is, distortion and other distracting sound artifacts can be introduced at any point in the assembly line. Too much glue or too little solder in a critical joint, an unstable speaker suspension or unbalanced left-right headset speaker matching can all cause problems. We take extreme care to prevent this. Assembly line testing stages and quality control measures ensure that every headset, every external sound card meets our tight tolerance standards, so that we never compromise on the original intention of the design.
EPOS delivers excellence in all product characteristics — audio engineering, aesthetics, and build quality. We pride ourselves in providing competitively priced products of premium quality. Our reputation depends on this.
We bring together design, technology and understanding of gamer needs to deliver a true premium audio experience. Immersive, life-like audio adds another dimension to the gaming experience and takes gamers to another level.
We are proud to deliver Out of This World Gaming Audio.