[bootman]

Is it really that hard to make an inexpensive (~$100) DH processor with digital inputs?

I envision something like a DSP Pro but with a toslink/coax input and RCA outs to run into an amp.

Am I the only one who wants something like this?

Are the DH chips hard to get? (a possible DIY project?)

 

[cosmo]

Dolby headphone doesn't sound too good with music, but sounds great with movies. I use the dolby headphone in Windvd 4, with the room setting on medium. If you only want it for movies, you might just want to use windvd.

 

[bootman]

Quote:

Originally posted by cosmo Dolby headphone doesn't sound too good with music, but sounds great with movies. I use the dolby headphone in Windvd 4, with the room setting on medium. If you only want it for movies, you might just want to use windvd.

It is movies that I'm interested in but not on the PC.
I have PowerDVD with DH and I do enjoy it but I wish I could get DH on my home HT when I want to watch a movie late at night without waking up the little ones.

I did some research and it seems that there are some DH ICs out there but they can't be used unless a license fee is paid to Dolby Labs. I can see how this would discourage DIYers or small manufacturers.

 

[rickcr42]

Quote:

Are the DH chips hard to get? (a possible DIY project?)

You can not purchase a "dolby headphone" chip , no such animal .

What you CAN purchase is a DSP chip but then you need a liscence to obtain the algorithyms to program the chip .
The liscence is A-not cheap , B-your product must be be tested and meet certain requirements or your liscence is revoked , and C-you have to sell a required amount of units .

This has been pissing me off for a couple of years (along with HDCD chip availability) now. Yeah it sounds like crap with most music but for movie viewing it rocks .

I have no desire to purchase an all in one receiver just to get the one feature I need and should not be forcedto take on mediocre electronics to get surround in headphones . The first manufacturer to step up and make this available as an add-on portable device will make a boatload of loot IMHO .

So where is it ?

 

[bootman]

Quote:

Originally posted by rickcr42 You can not purchase a "dolby headphone" chip , no such animal . What you CAN purchase is a DSP chip but then you need a liscence to obtain the algorithyms to program the chip . The liscence is A-not cheap , B-your product must be be tested and meet certain requirements or your liscence is revoked , and C-you have to sell a required amount of units . This has been pissing me off for a couple of years (along with HDCD chip availability) now. Yeah it sounds like crap with most music but for movie viewing it rocks . I have no desire to purchase an all in one receiver just to get the one feature I need and should not be forcedto take on mediocre electronics to get surround in headphones . The first manufacturer to step up and make this available as an add-on portable device will make a boatload of loot IMHO . So where is it ?

Paging Mr. Hertsens...

 

[Nefarion]

http://www.dolby.com/dolbyheadphone/DH_Products.html

Denon makes a reciever with dolby headphone out.. So does a few others. Very good reciever that does it all...

You can test dolby headphone with your regular reciever by obtaining the movie pearl harbor. It has a seperate dolby headphone track intended to introduce the format.

 

[bootman]

I know about the Denon.
It is their top of the line and also makes my point.
Where are the affordable DH products?
Something like what I described above could be built at an attractive price point,
and would help push out the product to the masses IMO.
Why does DH have to be an expensive niche product?

 

[Nefarion]

"I know about the Denon.
It is their top of the line and also makes my point.
Where are the affordable DH products?
Something like what I described above could be built at an attractive price point,
and would help push out the product to the masses IMO.
Why does DH have to be an expensive niche product?"




Amen to that. My guess is popularity issues... Hard to market a product that most people will not use. But, you are absolutely correct. There defenitly should be an affordable to get DH.

I think they make a few cordless surround sound headphones.. Most of em arent dobly, just an artificial mutation of the truth

. One of the base units on a DH cordless headphone setup i saw had a seperate headphone out for a "landline" headphone. I guess it would be ideal if you found one with RCA outs on the base unit... Just an idea..

 

[jimbobuk]

Quote:

You can test dolby headphone with your regular reciever by obtaining the movie pearl harbor. It has a seperate dolby headphone track intended to introduce the format.

Only the 60th Anniversary Commemorative Edition of Pearl Harbour has the Dolby Headphone soundtrack, its a 2 disc-er and Region 1... USA for those international users out there... I ordered it specially for it (having already owned the region2 UK version of the film) ...

Its pretty good... damn good actually... the only film to have it tho.. pity really.. I see some of the point to it.. I always liked to think that it was about dolby headphone as a technology evolving, so getting a better decoder makes more sense than hardcoding a particular generation one on the disc... the thing is tho if you brought a hardware decoder it would obviously be fixed.... Power DVD, and WinDVD never state if dolby headphone has been improved, say a version number of it or anything... I did spot the new Win DVD has the new Dolby Speaker technology, must give that a try sometime... creates 5.1 from 2 speakers... i know a lot of others claim to do stuff but its worth a listen to see if it works any better than the competition like DH did....

I still have semi-choppy DVD playback on my PC... I'm piping the video to the TV.. (which may not be helping, as this tends to frustrate things... for example playing mame games through tv has more issues than through the monitor.. ) anyways I have an AMD 2100+ XP chip.. 512meg ram... decoding the dvd isn't much of a load but still its not perfect.. this is why i want to get a hardware based version... that denon would only be brought for a listening room.. its fairly expensive.. like £3000 or something... ($3000-5000) which is crazy for DH

Sadly headphones just on mass market... validly ppl point out you can't share music/sound with headphones... but i think most ppl dont like being tied down by the lead too... and portable cans sound so bad compared to wired ones... i dunno

 

[rickcr42]

Quote:

Denon makes a reciever with dolby headphone out.. So does a few others. Very good reciever that does it all...

And THAT is the point of this (or atleast MY) RANT !

Why should I or anyone have to replace an entire systemto obtain a single lacking feature ?

I am very happy with my present electronics and see no reason to purchase an entire receiver for the option of listening to headphones with surround sound (which by the way I already do in a way, a diy add-on ).

I had it from a "good" source that Dolby Headphone would be showing up on DVDs , but that was a year ago and the realization is slow in coming.

And to be honest , dolby encoded discs are really the way to go . Everything would be available in any home system for playback .

Hell it's not like there is not enough room on the disc for the additional sound track !
Ever notice some of the stupid crap they put on a dvd to fill up the space ?
Does ANYONE do the "features" anymore ?

I want my dolby headphone NOW and I wantit convenient !

I do not want to modify my entire home entertainment system to gain it though.

No friggin' way.

 

[jimbobuk]

not tried looking at the pearl harbour disc but standard stereo streams are usually 192k ac3... tiny... but ac3 in some ways is inferior to mp3 i believe.. more specialised at adding in the extra channels... i dunno.. I just wonder how much of the spatialisation of dolby headphone survives a 192k encode... if its more that'd be good.. don't even know if its possible to go higher with stereo AC3...

my point being that AC3 being a lossy perceptual codec means that it could decided a lot of the triggers for dolby headphones magic are not required to be encoded perfectly..

But agreed... it would be nice to have that on a lot of discs, the pearl harbour one sounds good... i dont see it happening tho

 

[rickcr42]

Quote:

not tried looking at the pearl harbour disc but standard stereo streams are usually 192k ac3... tiny... but ac3 in some ways is inferior to mp3 i believe.. more specialised at adding in the extra channels... i dunno.. I just wonder how much of the spatialisation of dolby headphone survives a 192k encode... if its more that'd be good.. don't even know if its possible to go higher with stereo AC3...

try not to get hung up on the specs .We are not talking about reproducing hi res music for critical listening but enjoying movies with full surround over headphones.

A good 80% of any soundtrack will be dialog,the rest just "noise" for ambient sound and then there are the FX sounds , explosions.flyovers,etc.

For these signals dolby headphone (or any surround format) is more than adequate.I have listened on an encoded DVD and I have been convinced.
There is nothing like the audio cues agreeing with the visual


Quote:

my point being that AC3 being a lossy perceptual codec means that it could decided a lot of the triggers for dolby headphones magic are not required to be encoded perfectly..

Again ,apply movie standards and not what you would consider good for music .

Even when I watch videos on the "big rig" I adjust everything differently.
I would NEVER consider using a bass boost for music but I do for surround.Just SOUNDS better,more dramatic.

consider : you are watching a movie,the sound is just just loafing along,mostlydialog or "quiet action" and...

[size=medium]WHAMMO ![/size]

You jump damn near out the window , as you are meant to reract

Where there was ZERO bass a momentago now hits you right between the eyes (and gut) .

this is not a natural effect in music but is EXACTLY what happens in life .You are reading or doing some other "quiet" endevour and all of a sudden someone drops a damn can of chunky soup on as hardwood floor

You jump of course

And to be honest ,I use a passive surround matrix on my big rig .
ALL active decoders I have used sounded bad . The ones I heard and could tolerateI could not afford.
Some kind of "croaky/hollow/steely thing going on , not to mention all the digital stages between the input and output of the average receiver ,even in the "stereo" mode (the DSP is still in circuit).

My passive "hafler" setup has a twist though.
The main or "front" channels are pure,direct to the speakers from the amp .
A second speaker cable goes to the input of Dyna ST-120 power amp through resistoor matrix to a a Dynaco QD-1 MK ll Passive Surround system box.
In this manner the center and rear channels are driven from an entirely different amp even though the system is technically passive .
The 'main" stays unchanged.
This is the FIRST so called surround setup I have used extensively that i actually use with music (center off mostly).
With live albums it sounds great.
Studio recordings not so great,some real bad.

So the point is ,music has one requirement ,movies another.
You can enjoy a home theater with much less outlay than you could with music only systems.

I STILL want my Dolby Headphone NOW DAMMIT !

 

[jimbobuk]

yes u are right, movies and music are not the same.. I was only trying to wonder whether AC3 at 192k which isn't all that good... would it be sufficient to capture the dolby headphone effect sufficiently... it works in Pearl Harbour, I''ll find out what bitrate its at..

movies or music.. a codec makes decisions about removing what it deems is not audible... it also makes stereo soundstaging sacrifices with stuff like joint stereo etc... I dont know the ins and outs of AC3 more the other formats, mp3, mpc etc.. I put my own binaural samples online (http://jimtreats.crosswinds.net/MyTr...ural/index.htm) and enjoy them.. I encode them in mpc for optimum quality..
I am concerned about the spatial triggers and other binaural cues being left in my recordings as well as dolby headphone on discs... but i dont know where u heard they were going to put it on dvds but i thought i'd heard completley the opposite.. pearl harbour was the 1st and the last

 

[bootman]

Quote:

Originally posted by rickcr42 I STILL want my Dolby Headphone NOW DAMMIT !

I'm with you there.
I posted this question over at the headroom forum.
I'll keep my fingers crossed.

 

[rickcr42]

Quote:

but i dont know where u heard they were going to put it on dvds but i thought i'd heard completley the opposite.. pearl harbour was the 1st and the last

A private e-mail from someone involved with the technology . But since it was private ,and i have not heard of this person posting in a forum the same info I will keep the name private . Especially since it is sooo long overdue .

In fact I was told "hang in there , sooner thann you think !" , but again that was last year.

What worries me most is if there is a lack of interest then another company with "bigger guns" will step forward eventually and we will have the old format wars repeated .

SQ VS. QS VS. CBS SQ VS. QD-4 VS. HAFLER DYNAQUAD VS. EV44 (quadraphonic wars, at least THIS lead to surround sound as we know it today )

VHS VS. BETAMAX (video disc wars)

LASERDISC VS. CED (video tape wars)

MP3 VS. AAC VS WM (lossy compression wars)

Can be a real pain in the ass , especially if you are one of those guys who just MUST have the new thing and you choose wrong (wanna buy a Sony Betamax ?) .

And then again , maybe a format war will push the technology to evolve and become commonplace , a "me first" attitude is a great motivator

In closing - WHAT'S THE FRIGGIN' HOLDUP HMMMM ?




BTW : I'll tell you guys ,if i had the loot for the startup cost and the liscencing proceedure (plus the time) I would do this !
I am dead serious . A "black box" go-anywhere Dolby Headphone add on . if I could bring it in for say $100.00 - 150.00 I would SLAY the market !
No doubt in my mind.

Imagine all those laptop owners who's sole means of "home entertainment" is the laptop :
CD player
DVD player
MP3
Games

Throw in my USB Dac/Headphone amp , a modest amp/speaker combo and talk about a "killer" portable/home entertainment package !!!!!!!!

JEEEEZ