Alternative design headsets incorporating activenoise-cancellation or bone conduction were evaluated in listening tests in a virtual reality environment. Virtual sound sources in the horizontal plane had to be identified using stereo panning in the frontal hemisphere. In addition, transfer characteristics and damping effects were measured with a dummy-head. Results indicate that up to five source locations can be used in real applications with high accuracy in virtual scenarios, independent of the spectral content of the excitation signals. Furthermore, the use of noise cancellation in presence of 80 dB background noise does not improve performance. Commercially available bone conduction headsets can provide the same detection accuracy even if the subjective sound quality is lower.