Last week I watched bits of the Intel Extreme Masters tournaments held in Katowice. Watching Counterstrike I noticed that the players had earbuds in as well as over-the-ear headsets on. I found this puzzling but came to the conclusion that one was for in-game sound effects and the other for team chat. Is that correct?
I also watched a bit of Starcraft 2 and the players had the same setup. This seems strange since Starcraft is a one-on-one game with no need to talk to anyone. Why would they have this setup?
The in-ear buds are the game sound, the over-ear headsets are for noise cancellation.
The pros are sitting near one another but communicating over their coms. They definitely don’t want to hear two sets of voices every time somebody talks. Then there are the large crowds and the casters. Stuff gets noisy.
I hadn’t considered the noise cancelling aspect, that makes sense. As I understand it, in Counterstrike the environmental sounds are quite important. If an enemy in a nearby hallway is running you can hear them even if you can’t see them. Having those sounds drilled straight into you head thru earbuds might make them clearer.
Yes, in my experience the combination of earbuds driving sound directly into your ear canal combined with sound suppression that fully cups your ears is going to do the best job of providing clear, exclusive sound. It makes sense to use both, even though you can have noise-canceling earbuds and sound through over-the-ear cups, in either case it’s not the most optimal. If it’s critical to hear with no distractions you use the best possible method for both.