An amp for Movies?

[Puddleglum]

I am planning on using my toshiba 3960 for movies as well, and was wondering what amps would be good for watching movies if there is such a thing. First of all I have never heard an external headphone amplifier of any kind, so I don't know that I would need one. Second, This would be in addition to a music amp, so it doesn't need to perform there. The reason I ask is because I was looking at headroom's site at the AKG Hearo 999 and was intrigued by it's description. I suppose that's a surround sound processor too, but since I haven't found any other s.s. processors for headphones, I wanted to see if you guys had any ideas.

 

[britishbane]

I think AKG makes an amp for this purpose.

 

[cosmopragma]

I've tried the AKG Hearo series, and all I can say is forget it.
Weird and not immersive.
The computer software solution Dolby Headphone is better (and cheaper), but still not really competitive to a decent 5.1 speaker setup.
BTW, for stereo music I prefer headphones.

 

[cpw]

I use a Headroom TotalBithead when watching movies on my laptop and I use a Ray Samuels HR2 when watching movies on my main HT system. I am about to replace a PPX3 that was in my home office/TV/music room (speaker system) with either a Stealth, A10 or maybe a Meier audio Prehead MkII.
I guess what I'm saying is that you can use pretty much anything depending how much you want to spend.
If your not concerned with trying to simulate surround, I think I'd start w/ something like the bithead/airhead that can also double as an amp for a portable (iPod, etc.). That way if you upgrade your home system you don't have to off the bithead.
My $.02.
CPW

 

[lini]

Puddlegum: Well, if you don't want to go the suggested "Dolby Headphone per software dvd player"-route, you could always get Philips' HD1500 system and just use it's Dolby Headphone processor amp, ignoring the included HD1000 phone. The latter probably isn't that bad, either - but my test sample had such a noisy automatic headband mechanism, that testing for sound quality didn't really make sense to me. I could confirm this with Philips in the meantime - they've got that problem on quite a few HD1000s, and their engineers are already working on a solution...

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini

 

[GoRedwings19]

I use a gsp solo 2004 for movies and and a rudistor RP5 ref for music

 

[Mr.Radar]

A Sennheiser DSP (if you could find one) would probably work well as it's pretty powerful and supports Dolby Headphone and Dolby ProLogic.

 

[lini]

Sorry, but there's no Dolby Headphone support on the Senn DSP - DH didn't even exist, when the thingy was sold.

Greetings from Hannover!

Manfred / lini