As far as audio goes, I have mainly dts-hdma and True HD in my mkv's. I also have regular dts and ac3 tracks as well, with the majority being in 5.1. Most of the lossless tracks are in 7.1 and 5.1 to give you an idea.
So basically you're getting AC-3 or DTS from those, which will be decoded by whatever media player. You can very likely bitstream the MA or MLP audio via HDMI however. The Dolby and DTS decoders include downmix coefficient matrices to put that content into stereo, or you can use some HRTF simulacra (like Dolby Headphone) to do a bit more processing there. It will really come down to personal preference as to what you like best.
I wouldn't mind this option honestly. I already switch my audio outputs on my computer multiple times a day. Basically having to take my cans from my pc to my receiver would be fine as long as the receiver would be a good fit for the headpones. I guess it really boils down to if I'm wasting the potential of owning a good dac/amp setup and only using it while I'm on the pc. I have an xbox one at the moment which is sending a pcm stream to my receiver. Again, this is why it's kind of important that the receiver can do some decent virtual surround for me.
I'd look at Yamaha and their SilentCinema function then.
As far as my room setup goes, I have an HK 2600 which is going to be replaced soon since it's always given me issues like random loud pops, and I get a ton of static going to my speakers.
Yeah that sounds like an issue with the receiver, and I can't honestly say I'm surprised to hear its an HK either...
I have a klipsch rc-64 center, RF-82's, RB-61's for my rear left and right, and rs-42's for my side surrounds. My sub is a 15" Premier Acoustic PA-150. I realize this is a bad setup for my new condo, but I've had this setup for some time, so I may as well use it. My room is huge as well, about 14x25 not including the open kitchen in the back. I love my setup, but don't want to piss my neighbors off, hence why I am looking at some killer headphones and setup options, so I can enjoy the full sound (even if it's virtual) that my blu ray rips can play.
Smoke'em if you got'em, right?
Big chunks of your reply weren't grabbed correctly by the quote (this is not an uncommon issue on Head-Fi IME), so that's why the following looks out of order (because it is!):
I have experienced the virtual surround, and have looked at those demos before. Stereo is fine and all, but using virtual surround I feel adds a ton to most of the games I play, and I can better pinpoint where someone is on the screen and feel more immersed this way. I feel like I will get alot more and enjoy more with virtual surround than with just a regular stereo signal.
If you like the effect with your games, by all means go for it - I enjoy Razer Surround with most games, and like I said, that's the option I'd take instead of being chained some proprietary device and its driver combo just to have that functionality (and the "calibration" feature is actually useful IME). My whole point was that there's a massive amount of hype in the "gaming world" about "you need virtual surround 7.1 surround for 7.1 in headphones 7.1 7.1 7.1!!!" which is largely spill-over from the marketing associated with various "gaming headsets" (don't buy those, they're usually awful) - just like how we can thank Beats for getting everyone insisting on needing ANC. :rolleyes:
That doesn't mean it isn't a worthwhile feature if used correctly, but it isn't a magic bullet that will cure cancer and stop hair loss.
Basically what I'm envisioning for your configuration: Razer Surround on the PC will handle the surround simulacra there, and you can get whatever audio interface you want. Plug the Xbox into the receiver and send 5.1 DTS or Dolby (it can do either, it doesn't matter what you pick) into the receiver, and use the receiver's surround simulacra/HRTF feature (e.g. Dolby Headphone, SilentCinema) if you like that effect there.
For movies you're really going to have to play with the settings you have available to you, and make the choice you ultimately like. I would say its reasonable to completely end and remove the whole "getting the full potential" piece of this discussion because
no matter what you do (e.g. use the Dolby/DTS downmix coefficient matrices, use an HRTF/simulacra package, etc) you're getting the entirety of the audio reproduced via stereo on the headphones. Ultimately it just comes down to how much extra "stuff" you want to season the pot with, and thats all preference.
So running a digital signal from the sound card will not cause any distortion, correct? Wouldn't a standard line out jack from the sound card, going to, say, a regular modi 2 with regular rca jacks be analogue, and pick up any interference from the sound card? I feel like this would negate the point of getting a good DAC. Also, if I went the sound card to amp route, wouldn't I run into the same issue, ie sound card to amp would be analogue and prone to interference? Or are there good amps with an optical/coax in?
So much marketing hype here. And I really do mean that. Theoretically yes, but theoretically your body is also awash in all that RF too, and all the food you eat contains chemicals (and is made from chemicals, and in fact your'e made from chemicals too), and 100% of people who consume dihydrogen monoxide are going to die eventually.
Reality: analog signal wiring has been used for almost a century, and as a people/species/culture/whatever we've gotten exceptionally good at understanding how it works, and how to make it work better. Things like shielding and impedance bridging, which in the hands of a modern audiophile marketing rep turn into NASA-esque innovations but in reality are fairly simple electronic principles. You have nothing to worry about here, and I'd say you can safely put the marketing hype around "your computer is noisier than an atomic bomb and will destroy your audio and its very bad you need to buy our [thing]!" out of your mind. Don't believe me? Go look up measurements of modern soundcards and onboard audio - they offer similarly good measured performance as most of the rest of the stuff you're considering, and won't cost "a grand or two" to get there.
Now, this does not mean "0 distortion whatsoever" (that is 100% impossible and anyone who says otherwise is incompetent or trying to rip you off), but it does mean "distortion below audible threshold" (and that "Below audible threshold" is really the watchword here - so what if its visible on a scope down there at -160? you can't hear it, you can't perceive it, so it doesn't exist for you, and you're the one making the payment, not the scope).
Anything with an optical or coaxial input will be a DAC. There's a lot of wishy-washy hijinks that goes in the world of "headphone audio" where all manner of devices become "DACs" or "amps" or whatever else, and there's not a lot of clarity (and of course this helps to perpetuate more FUD to move even more product).
I will most likely get a new asus card since i like dolby headphone, as long as it runs well on windows 10 x64. I can go with a creative card and I have the x-fi fatality already, but the drivers are horrible and I really don't want to mess with creative anymore.
I've honestly never had positive things to say about Dolby Headphone. If that's your preference, don't let me stand in your way, but consistently (and we're talking over at least a decade here) its well into the realm of "klaxon in a box canyon" (like most every other Dolby "fake surround" technology (e.g. Virtual Surround, Pro Logic ad nauseum, Virtual Speaker, Mobile, etc).
Completely agree on X-Fi drivers being a wretched mess. FWIW the new SoundCore parts have significantly better drivers, and are stable, but honestly any modern soundcard (especially at the $200+ mark) is kind of a joke these days - they've basically been left behind by the rest of the world, and have become something of an anachronism.
I think what i was getting at is whether or not I get a good dac/amp combo and keep it at my computer desk, and sometimes move it to where my receiver is when I watch movies. Unless there is a better solution to this. Here's some pictures of my setup:
Pics
Unfortunately I can't post them in here directly. As you can see, moving my receiver to my desk would not be feasible. To make my life easier, I am thinking I will just use my headphones on my pc, then when I want to watch a movie with virtual surround, whether coming from the pc or receiver directly, I'll go to the couch and use the tv. Hopefully this makes more sense.
Headphones will certainly be more portable than any gear, so its probably most reasonable to have something at your PC that they plug into, and something at your TV area that they plug into. Using the receiver at the TV area basically solves that (and who cares if its not the be-all end-all of the universe - you've said it yourself that usage here is probably 10% of the time, AND its just for movies and games, which represents a significantly lower point of diminishing returns (I'll come back to this point don't worry)). So basically you need a "something" at the desk to plug your cans into.
Something else to think about - you may consider getting a wireless headphone just for the receiver area, for movie watching and whatnot (okay all honesty you could just have a wireless headphone for everything and switch inputs on its base station, and thinking about it that sounds really simple, but I'll be honest in that I'm not sure how Sennheiser or AT's best wireless offerings stack up to the rest of the world, I know AT has one that actually does virtual surround (Dolby/DTS) via its base station too).
I have used onboard sound, and while it is adequate, the software is another issue entirely. Getting surround to work properly with drivers in windows 10 is a major pain, especially since my motherboard from asus is almost 6 years old and does not have the driver support for the hardware anymore. I am thinking dolby headphone with a good asus card would be alot better than razer surround, but please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not afraid to spend 40 bucks on an asus pci card to achieve this.
Personally I would take Razer Surround over Dolby [anything] 8 days a week, but that's my preference. Some people may feel differently. My feelings and thoughts about Windows 10 aren't appropriate for sharing in a public venue (and besides that, the last time I "went there" a Microsoft shill appeared and proceeded to astroturf and gaslight like it was going out of fashion).
Getting the basic Xonar wouldn't be a bad idea to get around driver issues and if you want the Dolby Headphone feature. I think they also have a USB model if you want more portability, but afaik that's still not going to connect to the Xbox or anything of that sort.
I get what you are saying. My receiver has to process the mkv audio basically. I don't see how my pc could do this from a lossless audio track without turning it into a core track and basically negating the point of lossless. Or is there a way for my pc to process it into virtual surround while retaining the fidelity? I am fine getting a 15-20 foot cord for my headphones, or an extension and running them from the receiver if this is a better way to watch my movies sound wise. Again, if you think the receiver is fine for the cans.
There is no "processing the MKV audio" - MKV is a container, not a codec. The playback application unpacks the container and dumps out the h.264 or VC-1 video and whatever audio, which is then decoded for playback there. None of that "processing" is done in the receiver. Some (relatively expensive) Blu-ray playback software can take the TrueHD or HD-MA tracks and decode them, and there's the (now rare) Asus and Auzen cards with HDMI loop-thru that can decode the bitstream out as well, and then you get multi-ch PCM which can be sent out via HDMI or turned into analog and put out via analog. Alternately, I would assume that there shouldn't be as much of an issue finding a player that can bitstream the lossless codec via HDMI for an external decoder. The whole thing is ultimately a total mess because of how nuts the Blu-ray people went with DRM, so expect a lot of "hackish" or "kludgy" fixes to make it all work smoothly (as opposed to just throwing a Blu-ray into your Xbox and having it bitstream the audio and kick the video out via HDMI to the HT system). I certainly understand the convenience factor with digital downloads and streaming and all that, so I'm not saying "get everything on disc" - just know what you're getting into.
I wouldn't fuss too much with "the fidelity of the lossless vs the other" - the performance of DTS and AC-3 is already high enough as to be arguably transparent (this is that "below audible threshold" thing again), so basically if you've got audio coming out, you're "working" and it depends on how much more fussing you want to devote to tweak things beyond that.
Theoretically Razer Surround and Dolby Headphone should be able to take the multi-ch output from movie playback and do their thing with it, and receivers that offer SilentCinema or Dolby Headphone can do that as well. I say "theoretically" because again we're back to trying to make various applications play nicely together, while dancing around the big'ol DRM gorilla.
Would running an hdmi cable to the receiver from my video card already provide the proper audio, and basically make an optical cable redundant or pointless?
Absolutely. The only "gotcha" is if you're dealing with a soundcard that has proprietary drivers that do "something" - that won't be applicable to the videocard's interface. But in terms of "sending the audio out" - the videocard has HDMI, and HDMI is more capable than S/PDIF. This is partly why I like the Razer Surround option, because its interface agnostic. Creative has a similar package that puts their SBX suite on whatever hardware (and based on the same software for SoundCore cards, I wouldn't see any big issues with this - I've never encountered the stability problems that X-Fi was plagued with).
But I suppose my option is also to either get the sound card with it's own virtual surround processing and use optical to receiver, or run the video card hdmi with razer surround? Not sure if the second option would even work or be as good. Thoughts?
Ultimately it comes down to your preference - if you think Dolby Headphone is the cat's meow, then you need some way to get Dolby Headphone. Currently I'm not aware of any stand-alone software package that does Dolby Headphone (because, you know, that would be too efficient and make too much sense), but you can get Razer Surround and Creative SBX as stand-alone software packages that will run on compatible interfaces.
I'm pretty set on getting either the marantz of Denon for my setup
Why?
, so I'll have to see what they provide sound wise for headphone surround.
Not very much.
Would another cheap option be to get a basic dac/amp from creative or something that has dolby headphone and use that for my pc audio for the headphones?
Yeah you could, but it won't be from Creative (Creative pushes their proprietary SBX package). The question then is "will it be compatible with the HD 800" - a lot of those cheap devices don't assume they're going to be driving high impedance cans.
So heres the thing with the virtual surround coming from the pc. I have the software process this, whether via razer surround or I get an asus card for dolby headphone. This then goes to the receiver and the computer will be sending the virtual surround to the receiver, correct?
1) It's all software no matter what branding is on it. The era of actual hardware audio died over a decade ago.
2) Yes exactly it will output to the receiver (or a DAC, or whatever). It will appear to the receiver to be a 2ch signal, and probably sound very weird if played back over the speakers.
Next, with the headphones plugged into the receiver, will the receiver just send the pc signal straight to the headphones, and not process the signal further? (Basically getting the virtual surround straight from the pc) I would think a pass through to headphones wouldn't work with the receiver.
With modern AVRs it is impossible to have a discussion about "and not process the signal further" - they're big elaborate computers with a lot going on inside. Basically treat them like a black box and don't worry about the innards too much, or you'll go nuts. It is entirely possible to have a stereo signal go into the box, and come back out for the headphone side, so you could use it as an amplifier for your headphones taking whatever Dolby Headphone/Razer Surround/Creative SBX/whatever input. If you have a multi-channel (digital) output and select the "right" receiver, it can probably do Dolby Headphone itself (so the computer just sends multi-ch out like a DVD player would) - should be the exact same processing, and the only reason I bring this up is if you've already got (say) Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect on the PC, it may be a one-stop-shop for a new AVR that has the right blend of features.
Where I say "put it in a black box" is because you don't know, for example, if there's any SRC/ASRC, where the signal is going in terms of other DSP effects, etc. It's not the "straight thru" that equipment of the 1970s and 1980s exhibited, but you can certainly have it not trying to "add" anything. If that makes sense.
I could get two long cords/extension cords for the headphones I suppose, and run one from the receiver to my desk for gaming and my pc (only issue is volume control not within reach, unless I get an IR adapter for the remote, or use an app on my phone to control it), and then use the other from the receiver to the couch, so I don't have to keep moving cords around. Is this practical, and will anything greater than say 20-25 feet cause an impedence issue?
Like I said, I've never seen a receiver that will not auto-sense when a cable is plugged in, so if you left that cable plugged into the receiver, it will defeat the speakers.
There's no problem with a well-made and long extension cable, yes the wire has impedance (all wire does) but again we're back to "is it actually going to make an audible difference?" and the answer there: almost certainly not. Grado, for example, states that you can happily daisy chain 3 of their extension cables together before anything should become audible - do you need longer than 45 feet?
The volume control thing is certainly a logistical piece to consider, and beyond what you've already proposed, I don't have any other ideas to add there.
So I guess ultimately, do I want my audio signal to be bypassed on the receiver when using headphones? Assuming my pc is processing it.
I'm not following this question.
Lastly, if I'm playing a true-hd or hdma movie through mpc or zoom player, and LAV audio is converting the signal to PCM and that is what I am hearing, is it still the same quality with virtual surround?
Whatever virtual surround application should be able to take a 5.1 input and give you an HRTF headphone output, but debating "quality" will get sticky because you don't (and won't) know exactly what's in the guts of that software and how it does what it does (because that's their secret sauce). Back of the envelope guess? We're back to the "below audible threshold" argument again.
HDMI can carry up to 8-channel of PCM (un-compressed) 24-bit/192K of digital audio.
S/PDIF (optical/coaxial) can carry 2-channels of PCM audio, 24-bit/96K or 24-bit/192K
I just wanted to point out - a lot of S/PDIF receivers will have issues with consistently locking 24/192 (especially via optical).
Or up to 6-channels of encoded (compressed) 24-bit/48K of digital audio.
AC-3 and DTS are 16-bit, as are their real-time encoded variants.
I kind of doubt any games take noticeable advantage of anything above 48K.
Or lossless transport. Most games source their audio from HBR lossy compressed tracks (to save space and improve performance), and IME the law of diminishing returns for gaming audio is very low (and I said this way up above, if anyone is still awake after what I'm guessing is a post of near Biblical length - I haven't previewed it). Basically I wouldn't buy anything really "hi-fi" for gaming audio, because the fidelity just isn't there in the source material, and in a lot of cases you may end up casting light on the blemishes that do exist. This doesn't mean don't enjoy your high end speakers or headphones, just I wouldn't buy them solely for gaming. I wouldn't worry at all about "hi rez" or similar support for gaming either.
A modern Blu-ray movie disk (with True-HD or DTS-Master audio) might sound better using HDMI, over compressed audio.
Theoretically it does, but it comes back to "can you really hear a difference?" Personally I cannot (and I've taken the "Pepsi challenge" on this to my own satisfaction, and encourage others to do the same), but maybe someone can - I don't know. I do know that both the DTS and Dolby Digital codecs were designed to be as transparent as possible, and they're a lot more efficient (in terms of bandwidth usage) than other lossy formats (e.g. mp3), but there is also a lot of noise shaping and equalization that goes on to achieve that. My feeling on it is that either way its "good enough" but if you can transport the lossless stream why run from it?
So HDMI is preferred as it pass full audio with no need for compression.
But if you use a sound card to process headphone surround sound, headphone surround sound is only 2-channel audio.
So you can use S/PDIF (PCM) and get full audio quality with the headphones.
+1.
Speaking of HDMI and PCs, you may go looking for one of these on the used market:
https://www.asus.com/Sound-Cards/Xonar_HDAV13_Deluxe/
There's no 1.4/2.0 support, so it won't do 4K video, but you'll have a soundcard that can actually take the lossless codecs and multi-PCM and send it back out, along with a ton of other features. Windows 10 may get in the way of this working, but I'm guessing everybody already assumed that...
I just thought you're willing to shell out $1-2k since you've mentioned it in your OP, I just skimmed through the replies.
Or at least that's the claim. But judging from the their old A8 version, I wouldn't be surprised, I own one for 2 years. There's a thread of it here, just in case you're bored 
