[Alleyman]

No, I'm not. In essence you are converting a 5.1 signal back to stereo, which ever way you get that 5.1 signal.

I meant DH can't ('shouldn't' is a better choice here I guess) be used on stereo files on its own.

 

[milkweg]

That's what the channel mixer is for. It takes your two channels and converts them into 6 channels. Once you do that the dolbyHP works well.

 

[ADD]

I have to agree with Milkweg here - there is a cetain amount of digital finess required to get the best out of Dolby headphone and anyone who just inputs stereo into it will most likely come away pretty disappointed. The original discussions subsequent to the Foobar plug-in being made available came to the conclusion that at least 4 channels need to be input into the Dolby Headphone DSP for it to work properly. In my own experiments I concur with those conclusions.

Where I would differ slightly from Milkweg is that after very extensive testing, I actually prefer the relative simplicity of converting the stereo to 4 channels rather than 6. In the end though, it's a matter of different flavours - I just found the 4 channel conversion to be particularly well suited to orchestral music.

In any event, so far as my understanding is concerned, the stereo to 4 channel conversion is about as basic as it comes - it just doubles up the channels so you have the left both front and rear and the right both front and rear. It doesn't have to derive anynew channel material that was never there to begin with. It's just that the Dolby Headphone algorythm is designed to accept either 16 bit or 32 bit floating multichannel input, so that' s just the way it is. In the end, the result speaks for itself. I couldn't use headphones without it any more.

If you just feed Dolby Headphone two channels, then the result is very thin, distant and emasculated sounding. Also, Dolby Headphone in Foobar (or presumably anything) won't work if you throw anything at it with a sample rate higher than 48 khz. A pity - I wish it would work at 96 khz, since it would mean I don't have to downsample my masters prior to running them through Foobar.

 

[MrKazador]

I'm using the Dolby Headphone Plugin with 96khz content fine. Its a DVD-A rip...
5.1 - 24bit - 96khz - FLAC

 

[Malth]

maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I have not been impressed in the least with DH

Normally use it with powerdvd. I don't get the sense of realistic surround sound, it just sounds like crappy processed 2 channel audio to me

using sennheiser HD485

 

[Assorted]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malth /img/forum/go_quote.gif maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I have not been impressed in the least with DH Normally use it with powerdvd. I don't get the sense of realistic surround sound, it just sounds like crappy processed 2 channel audio to me using sennheiser HD485

I think it really depends on your DAC. With my Pico, the DH DSP is so much better than my onboard laptop audio.

 

[HFat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ADD /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you just feed Dolby Headphone two channels, then the result is very thin, distant and emasculated sounding.

There are people who like it that way. It sounds more like speakers to me. To each his own.
If you think it's objectively worse, you may be fooling yourself by not adjusting the volume while A/Bing.

 

[milkweg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malth /img/forum/go_quote.gif maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I have not been impressed in the least with DH Normally use it with powerdvd. I don't get the sense of realistic surround sound, it just sounds like crappy processed 2 channel audio to me using sennheiser HD485

How do you use it with PowewrDVD? Or are you talking about a different plugin to the one foobar has available?

 

[MrKazador]

PowerDvd and WinDvd have the plug-in built into the media player. Just go into the options. PowerDvd also has CyberLink Headphone which IMO sucks compared to Dolby when listening to movies.

 

[Tone Def]

Yeah, Dolby headphone on Powerdvd rocks. I'm still running powerdvd 5 and had to purchase the plugin for about $20 I think.

 

[milkweg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrKazador /img/forum/go_quote.gif PowerDvd and WinDvd have the plug-in built into the media player. Just go into the options. PowerDvd also has CyberLink Headphone which IMO sucks compared to Dolby when listening to movies.

I don't have the option in my PowerDVD because it came bundled with my DVD-RW so the audio options is limited. I'm not paying $20.00 for the plugin either.

 

[MrKazador]

I'm not sure if this is against the rules but you can download the trial version and copy the codecs to a different location. Uninstall the trial and register the codecs yourself using the run command:
regsvr32 "c:\location_of_codec"
This way you can use any of the codecs for free using any directshow based media player like Media Player Classic.

 

[Acoustic Chef]

Quote:

Originally Posted by milkweg /img/forum/go_quote.gif I don't have the option in my PowerDVD because it came bundled with my DVD-RW so the audio options is limited. I'm not paying $20.00 for the plugin either.

Why? it's worth it.

MrKazador you're my hero.

 

[EnOYiN]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrKazador /img/forum/go_quote.gif I'm not sure if this is against the rules but you can download the trial version and copy the codecs to a different location. Uninstall the trial and register the codecs yourself using the run command: regsvr32 "c:\location_of_codec" This way you can use any of the codecs for free using any directshow based media player like Media Player Classic.

Although I am sure pretty much everyone (at least a lot of people) did this you shouldn't encourage them to do so. It's pretty illegal and there are legal ways to get it as well.

Edit: just consider the research that went in such plug-ins. That simply costs money.

 

[Tone Def]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Acoustic Chef /img/forum/go_quote.gif Why? it's worth it. MrKazador you're my hero.

I finally figured out how to get it to work with foobar. Man, does it sound good. I just want to make sure I have it optimally configured. I have the dsp to convert stereo to four channels and then I have the dolby headphone dsp. Is this correct.

I am assuming that all the "convert stereo to 4 channels" dsp does is replicate two more stereo channels right?

Thanks