The Best Studio Headphones For Gaming

Premium and budget choices with great positional audio

Photo taken by the author.

I wasn’t paid or asked by any of the companies featured here to write this, and bought these headphones with my own money.

Gaming headsets are so much better than they used to be, but my audiophile brain sometimes just doesn’t care. I’ve spent too much time in the production world to ever fully enjoy something made entirely for gaming, even if it has a nice tuning and fun design.

Studio headphones are gaming’s cool cousin from the pro audio gear side of the fence. They offer great isolation, low latency connections thanks to these “wires” you might have heard of, and sound signatures meant for audio production that also render game soundtracks perfectly.

It’s very likely that the games you’re playing were recorded and mixed with the help of dozens of pairs of studio headphones. These workhorses usually offer higher durability than consumer models, which is great if you’re the sort of person to rage after a bad loss, or if you just like your things to last for a while.

I spent twenty years producing audio for radio broadcasts and have an educational background in film and video production, and I’ve also written dozens of pro audio gear reviews. As such I’m a weirdo with a pile of studio headphones in my closet. Here are my two favorite models for gaming. I’ve used and loved both pairs for a few years without any quality issues. You’ll need a separate mic if you want to chat with either of these on a PC setup.

Beyerdynamic DT 700 Pro X

Photo taken by the author.

Beyerdynamic is one of the most popular makers of studio headphones. Their gear is beefy and repairable, and has a known sound signature developed over decades to be perfect for the pro sound world. Their popular DT 770s are on every headphone recommendation list on the internet.

For gaming, I’d suggest going up one tier to the much newer DT 700 Pro X. This is a sequel to their most venerable studio model, and yes, I agree it makes no sense that the number went down for the newer model. The 700’s design is a better balance between the clunky workhorse shape of the original 770 and a consumer pair that you could wear while working in a coffee shop. In spite of that it still has replaceable parts, and a removable mini-XLR cable that’s easy to swap out if you don’t like the two excellent included wires.

The speaker drivers are this headphone’s special secret for gamers. The “Stellar 45” units are much easier to drive than the older speakers in the DT 770’s. These newer units will get perfectly loud out of anything you plug them into, even the jack on the bottom of a PS5 or Switch 2 controller. Their $300 standard price is a little steep, yes, but you won’t need any other special gear to hear them at their best.

The sound signature is flat, accurate, and wonderful. It has just enough bass richness for single player gaming, and perfect positional audio for detecting your enemies online. The soft pads help to balance the tight clamping force, and provide solid isolation for your gaming sessions even though they’re made of cloth.

Koss Pro4S

The Koss headphones come with a hard case, which is nice. Photo taken by the author.

Looking for something more affordable? Then these forgotten Koss headphones are for you.

Koss is probably the best budget brand in the headphone space. Their on-ear models like the Porta Pro and the KPH series provide unfairly awesome sound for their price…and that same value extends to the over-ear Pro4S model. Yes, they spell it that way with the “4S” jammed up in there, and no, I don’t like it either.

Names are not cool in the studio headphone world.

The Koss Pro4S is similarly easy to power as the Beyerdynamic model. It’s a bit more bright up top, which means that positional cues will be even more clear than on the 700’s, and which could be fatiguing over longer gaming sessions if you’re not used to an extra blast of treble. The bass is similarly tight and controlled, and it’s all generally wonderful for gaming.

These come in at like $149 and go on sale all the time. I’m always surprised I don’t see these on more top headphone lists. The ear cups are sleek and tiny, but their unique shape means they still fit great over my ears, and they block out a surprising amount of outside noise.

The included cable is super short and coiled, so it’s not great for running over to a PC that you sit far from, but it has a couple of neat party tricks over the Beyerdynamic model. It’s removable and uses a basic 3.5mm connection, so finding a replacement should be even easier. Also you can plug it into either ear cup, so you can run the wire conveniently to your setup without it passing awkwardly around your lap. That might not seem like much, but it’s strangely off-putting to feel a wire against your arm in the middle of an intense fight in Rise of the Ronin.

Good Audio Is Worth It

Gaming headsets are nice because they’re pretty close to plug-and-play. You get speakers and a mic and you just go. But they often lock away their best features and more premium audio behind super high price tiers, and generally…you still get better sound from a comparably-priced studio pair. That studio pair will also probably be more repairable, too.

Games are made with pro audio gear, so doesn’t it make some sense to listen to them on the same type of equipment? Audio engineers don’t always have time to test everything on every type of setup, so they’re going to fall back on headphones and monitors that they trust. That gear is going to have sound performance that’s more like these studio pairs, so you’ll hear the game closer to how it was mixed if you use these headphones.

I only play online about once a week, so I don’t mind jumping through the hoops to use headphones and a mic, but I get that this isn’t for everyone. However, on PS5 you can use the built-in controller mic and it’s totally okay, and the Switch 2 has a shockingly good Nvidia GPU-powered microphone inside the unit itself that can pick you up from across the room. It feels a little like magic.

Once you try gaming with studio headphones, it’s hard to go back. The compromises of the wired connection and the bland aesthetics all fade away, replaced with good immersive audio. I break these out when I really want to disappear into a game, and there’s still nothing quite like it.