Not that I’m aware of. There’s been a fair bit of discussion in this thread about audio formats and how they related to headphones. Maybe some about specific audio hardware.
In the Xbox One era, Microsoft was very resistant to licensing their wifi-based wireless protocol out. They did not make a wireless headset themselves. Eventually Microsoft did license their tech for audio, but it was prone to connection problems and no headsets are still sold using it as far as I know. So third party headsets generally work one of two ways:
- HDMI or optical for game audio and a USB dongle for voice chat. Game and voice audio are handled separately by the headphones. Sometimes a mixer between the two, sometimes separate volume adjustments for each.
- A 3.5mm TRRS AKA “4 pole” AKA “3 ring” connection to the controller. Both game and voice audio are mixed by the Xbox console and sent to the headphones.
Some headsets would take the Dolby Digital 5.1 output from the Xbox and convert it for the headphones while trying to preserve the positional information. This was 2D positioning and the precursor to 3D positional audio.
The Xbox added 3D audio processing which was applied in the Xbox OS. Microsoft Sonic, Dolby Atmos, and DTS:X for Headphones are the software options today. They all process 2D and 3D positional audio down to a two channel headphone signal. They try to preserve the positional data through lots of tricks that fool our ears when wearing headphones. This works because our ears are relatively in the same spot relative to the headphones’ speakers. Better speakers in the headphones will generally offer better sound, which make these processing tricks more realistic sounding.
The Xbox Series X|S consoles dropped the optical port. Doing HDMI passthrough on 4K@120 signals is expensive. So Microsoft added the ability for headphones to present multiple speakers to the console over USB. Headphones compatible with the new consoles are using this instead of optical and USB. What this means is the “Game” and “Voice” are separate audio devices. Game sounds - processed by an 3D positioning sound driver or not - are sent to the “Game” virtual output via USB. Voice chat is sent to the “Voice” virtual output, also via the same USB connection.
When buying headsets, the differentiation is in several areas (in no particular order):
- Wired or wireless
- Wireless battery life
- Speaker size and quality
- Bluetooth support - not for the Xbox, but for another device like a phone
- Multi-platform capabilities - note that no licensed headset can work with both the Xbox and Playstation consoles, although there are some workarounds like multiple base stations or using the TRRS cable to the controller
- Comfort
- Price
You need to decide which features are most important to you and seek out the right headset. It’s a little daunting unfortunately.