Headphone and multi-channels

[syzygylock]

Hi all,

I went into a discussion with my co-worker about headphones and they were wondering about multi-channels and headphone. From what I saw, all the amp has the left and right audio inputs. So does that means that headphones and amp only support 2 channels? So does that means multi-channels output/source is rendered useless if you use headphone? Please clear this up for me, thanks

 

[syzygylock]

Bump for help.

 

[rhyx]

Quote:

Originally Posted by syzygylock /img/forum/go_quote.gif Bump for help.

I don't think bumping your own threads is proper etiquette here.

Yes, headphones are essentially 2.0 speakers. If you have a multichannel sound card and use headphones with them you are only plugging into one of the miniplug jacks. The other jacks (and the other sound channels in the case of 5.1 or 7.1) are just unused.

 

[MrKazador]

You can use Dolby Headphone for movies and multichannel music. It does an amazing job of creating a center and surround speakers, I love it.

 

[gz76]

Yeah, the thing is, we only have two ears to hear with, so it's possible to simulate the spatial cues required to give the illusion of a surround sound. There are a number of systems out there that do this, so it is possible to get the surround effect via headphones. Check out the Smyth SVS system that was all the rage at CanJam.