[musicreo]

 
Quote:

Congrats on your card =)
I tried out dolby headphones I felt it ruined the natural "flavor" of the headphones and changed it completely. Although I understand why some people might like it, I really can't stand it.
Try listening to music with dolby for a while and then the hi-fi or no EQ mode and try to appreciate the headphones' natural characteristics you might have a change of opinion later on.

I don't think that I would change my opinion. With 5.1 music Dolby Headphone sounds very good.  With stereo music I don't like it. But with stereo music and a 5.1 upmix DH sound good too. The problem is that it is not easy to get a good 5.1 upmix. The Dolby Prologic on the Xonar Cards is good for films but for music I don't like it.  For this foobar offers perfect options for upmixing and tweaking the upmix to your own taste.
 
For music and games I use DH1 and DH2. Films sound best with DH3.
 

 

[TheGomdoRi]

To each his own I guess, as long as you guys are enjoying your card and music

 

[PurpleAngel]

Keep this discussion going.

 

[sssboa]

Quote:

 

I don't think that I would change my opinion. With 5.1 music Dolby Headphone sounds very good.  With stereo music I don't like it. But with stereo music and a 5.1 upmix DH sound good too. The problem is that it is not easy to get a good 5.1 upmix. The Dolby Prologic on the Xonar Cards is good for films but for music I don't like it.  For this foobar offers perfect options for upmixing and tweaking the upmix to your own taste.
 
For music and games I use DH1 and DH2. Films sound best with DH3.
 

I am myself conservative with sound.
Though I don't know what's wrong with much wider soundstage thx to DH3. My Beyerdynamic 600ohm headphones sound hudgely better with that. Without DH Xonar Essence gives quite flat sound (not like eg. valve amp), with cheap headphones not much different than with expensive. Also my Beyers 250ohm and 600ohm wiothout DH on sound pretty much the same, with DH3 on the 600ohm sound like from a different league than 250ohm, soundstage and power are insane. I don't like any other tweaks like Dolby Pro Logic, equalizers, effects etc. etc. Only use DH and crossfeed plugins that also widen soundstage with some old recordings, like John Coltrane's (jazz) from 1950s where you have sax in left channel only, percussions in right.    
 

 

[vitzijak]

Does any one know about a portable option for Dolby Headphones for listening to stereo music only?  I know there used to be a JVC one.

 

[musicreo]

You could encode your music using Dolby Headphone with foobar and  use every mp3 -player.

 

[vitzijak]

For better or for worse, I am now 100% Apple.  I'm not aware of any program that will allow me to preprocess my music before I load it to the iphone...

 

[vitzijak]

Bump
 
?portable dolby options?

 

[phageghost]

What musicreo said.
 
You can use foobar to accomplish it.
Select the files you want to process in foobar.
Right click on them.
In the context menu select Convert->Convert...
Click on Output Format and choose an appropriate format. Might as well be AAC for this - you'll still have your "master" file (although if you're paranoid about transcoding the destination should be lossless if the source is lossy). Go Back.
Click on Destination and change Output Path to "Source Track Folder." Setup your output filename scheme. Maybe tag them with "_DH" at the end. Go Back.
Click on Processing and make sure "Enable decode postprocessing" is checked. Find Dolby Headphone in the list of DSPs on the right and bring it into the Active chain. You can do ReplayGain adjustment here as well (since we're DSPing the heck out of it anyway a little digital volume adjustment probably won't hurt). Go Back.
Click "Save<<" and name your preset for future use.
Click Convert. You'll have to point to the location of a command-line encoder for some formats.
Rescan your library with iTunes. 
Put them on your iThing.
Enjoy!

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

OMG... I didn't know you could actually convert them like that with foobar2000. I always used audacity to record what was being playing in foobar2000 and possibly adjust the vol level afterwards a tiny bit but yea this is much more convenient and actually lead to ever so slightly better sound quality result from subjective listening (the volume level is kept at a PERFECT level, which would require many mins of trial n error by ear and clipping finder to get right with Audacity). Will save me a lot of time, wish I had known this earlier. 
 
Cheers, now I can easily convert the files I wanna upload to my youtube chan using my custom tweaked dolby headphone config with best possible result.

 

[phageghost]

No problem!
 
I'm just getting into the whole serious headphone world and decided to try out the Dolby headphone wrapper on a whim, thinking it would probably sound like over-processed garbage (ala SRS, WoW). Instead, like you, I was blown away by what it did to my music. One of my main beefs with headphones in the past is the unnatural "in-the-head" soundstage they produce. But the ability of the Dolby processing to get the sound "out of my head" and present a pretty convincing soundstage was a revelation. Listening to a Shostakovich symphony I could "see" the positions of the soloists in the orchestra in front of me with total clarity. I also found myself instinctively looking at my speakers because it really seemed like the sound was coming from them. Hearing an unusual noise on a new track I would take the phones off to check if it was coming from somewhere in my apartment.
 
But, also like you, I found the change of requency response to be pretty dramatic. The treble and mids sounded too recessed and made it harder to resolve fine details. So when I get a chance to play around with it some more I'll try out your custom configs and play around with EQ / channel mixer adjustments. Listening to your demo videos I was pretty impressed with what you've put together. Definitely an improvement to stock. Thanks for taking the time to tweak all that!
 
I need to experiment more, for sure. For some reason one of the Miles Davis tracks I played through DH last night sounded absolutely terrible with it on: distorted and overloaded with reverb. Need to investigate further. But overall I'm feeling like this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It seems like it has the potential to keep all the advantages of headphone playback while fixing the lack of soundstage that has been its major drawback. That for me would be the holy grail.
 
Cheers,

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

You can try this config foobar2000.v1.1.6.Dolby.Headphone.(Forward.Less.Reverb)-RPGWiZaRD  (remember to use WASAPI if possible, it's set to "primary sound driver")
 
The Dolby Headphone plugin does add a bit reverb, DH2 mode the least but the reverb is also one part of the reason for the bigger stage, reduce the reverb and it will also start more closed in, this above config has pretty in my ears optimal "as little reverb as possible" VS as great soundstage as possible.
 
I may concider updating the forward config to use this with a bit less reverb than the other "forward" config, there's very very slight reduction in soundstage vs slightly less reverb, at this point it's a question about what you prioritize more.

 

[vitzijak]

Thanks for the info.  It looks like I can run Boot camp and install Foobar on my Mac, but I'm very paranoid about this as my Mac has been perfect (knock, knock says the wood) and all of my windows computers crash on a regular basis.  
 
Anyone know of anyways to do it on native Mac format?

 

[registradus]

urgh. I just tried out Dolby Headphone on my ASUS Xonar and it is TERRIBLE

 

[c64]

I also love dolby headphone 8 channel and dh-2 on a xonar dx
 
get no reverb or echoe ? sounds amazing with music philips fidelio x1 + fiio e5
 
I touch nothing in foobar just play flacs
 
I think it comes down to ear canals ? some people it sounds bad others it sounds great ?