For casual level play it’s indeed fine. But the “flatness” of a level doesn’t really mean much. You want to know which specific part of a nearby room someone is in. To the left… in front? Behind? Are they going through the hallway or cellar in cs_italy?

Like any game, you get huge value out of slight advantages when you get to the more high level skill.

You can just move the mouse horizontally slightly and you'll know the direction of the sound instantly.

Stereo is not for casual play, it's clearly the opposite as here's not a single professional player that uses surround to my knowledge.

I was around CAL-M level in 1.6 and I never had a surround sound setup, but I'm unconvinced that it has any meaningful benefit over headphones, which worked perfectly fine for intuiting where someone was. That's hardly a real benefit in higher level play, anyway because you know where everyone could be, anyway, and your movement is dictated by that knowledge as well.

>cs_italy

FYI there are AMA thread from makers of it on Reddit somewhere.

A quite fun read.