[seeberg]

Ah, I finally did it(this little comparo), and it was a damn waste of my time. Figures. Anyway, I've been ranting from time to time about getting Dolby Headphone as a DSP for any music program I could, because I liked it so much from the first time I heard it, but didn't want to deal with Musicmatch screwing with my computer. So I searched and I searched, coming up with nothing that was Dolby Headphone or sounded quite like it. But now that I realize it, that's a very good thing. Let me explain:

I now run Winamp with all the good videogame soundtrack plugins and 4Front Headphones DSP, which is the only decent headphone friendly DSP I've ever come across. I run it with 20%-25% virtual room when I don't simply feel like bypassing it, and this amount of headroom seems like my best comprimise between the effect I want and the original quality of the sound, and I must say if you haven't tried 4Front Headphones and use Winamp (I think it's available for other players, check yohng.com for the info), do it. You might like it.

Well, trying out a random selection of tracks with both Dolby enabled on Musicmatch and 4Front enabled on Winamp(EQ disabled on both, obviously) I found that 4Front with the settings I specified and Dolby running in DH1, the "light" setting(which is as far as I go with Dolby Headphone, the DSP gets unwieldly in DH3), 4Front trounced Dolby, which I certainly did not expect. There are pros and cons to both, and I'll get to them.

4Front Headphones DSP:
Pros:
-Sound is properly balanced to the tonal characteristics of the original sound.
-Virtual Room effect can be customized to any tolerance.
-It's free!
-It's available on a number of players that are out there (though winamp is the best, IMHO).
Cons:
-Sound gets a more metallic reverb as you increase the Virtual Room setting.
-Impact decreases as you increase the virtual room setting, but this is more drastic than the metallic effect; I suggest going no higher than about 33%.

Dolby Headphone DSP:
Pros:
-Works great for movies, good on original hardware like recievers, etc.
-Bass impact is maintained throughout the selection field of the DSP menu.
Cons:
-Stuffy on my setup, the midrange is submerged in murky midbass no matter what DH setting I'm on, 1, 2, or 3. This may make it not so good for music(not sure if it's the fault of musicmatch, but all my audio effects were turned off before using Dolby and it still sounded congested and murky).
-Only available for crappy(est) multimedia players-musicmatch and realaudio.
-You have to register it to gain full use of Dolby Headphone past the 30 day
limit.

I should note that Dolby Headphone is most likely MUCH better when implemented on hardware, without any interference by programming or audio related hardware. I actually still plan on getting a reciever with Dolby Headphone implemented on it in the near future.
I'll also make light of the fact that I had used 4Front headphones before, back when I was limited to using Windows Media Player 9(OMG, I hate WMP!). It worked well enough, but this was even before I had a crappy soundcard for my POS computer and was using the motherboard audio output. I'll be getting a Chaintech AV710 in the near future to finish off my PC's audio growth to replace my current Creative SBLive 5.1 card.

Anyone with any other Headphone DSP's to suggest should post them here-but ones that are not free or have a free test trial are not welcome, as I don't have spare green to waste on this purpose-, and any comments on my thread are welcome(keeps me from getting bored

) So post away!

,
Abe

 

[mattpwill]

I've tried loads of DSPs, and they all

a) had flaws
b) lowered the absolute sound quality

 

[Drakemoor]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mattpwill I've tried loads of DSPs, and they all a) had flaws b) lowered the absolute sound quality

The DSP's i've tried all

a) Mess up any positioning thats there
b) add far too much reverb
c) like is said above they over emhasize on midbass and loose the midrange.

 

[seeberg]

Every DSP has some kind of flaw, as can seen by the two I've reviewed, and every DSP does something to the music, i.e. change the tone of output to be biased towards shrillness or congestion. What I'm going for is what does the most ideal and desirable effect, while maintaining that balance with accuracy in respect to the original sound.

,
Abe

 

[NiceCans]

IF I use any DSP it is 4Front Headphones, and as seeberg stated, keeping it under 33% is best (I like it a bit lower than that).

If you wanted to really do a comparison, you could try 4Front 3D, which includes much more than the 4Front Headphone plugin . . . it is extremely adjustable, full-featured, and is much better than any others I had tried. It is however not free.

As others have stated though, in the long run (after the novelty has worn off) they do degrade the sound quality, thus I almost never use them any longer . . . especially since getting into higher-end audio equipment.

 

[Artie]

Well, I'm going to violate one of your rules, but for good reason: you get what you pay for. Most free DSP's are toys. The two that I've found that are truly hi-fi devices are iZotope's Ozone, and 4 Front's OSS3D. I, personally, don't get the hesitation to pay for software like this. We pay for our headphones, amps, computers, soundcards, etc. Its nice that we get the players for free, but so what if we pay a few sheckles to make them run better. But, I digress . . .

Ozone and OSS3D are very similar in what they do, but Ozone has the edge by virtue of a more intuitive control panel, and a very well written help file. Even though its a bit of reading, (due to extensive control capabilities), you can easily master all of its capabilites in short time. OSS3D, on the other hand, is not documented very well. This may simply be because the iZotope's folks native language is English, and 4 Front's is not.

I have bought and paid for both of these plug-ins, and have tried many others. As I said before, you get what you pay for. Ozone is worth checking out.

One quick note, I haven't tried these with Foobar, but I know they both work with the following:

WinAmp
QCD
VuPlayer (my current favorite.)

Artie

 

[]|[ GorE]

I too have tried the 4Front Headphone plugin and Dolby Headphone.

4Front:
Pros:

1)Nice Speaker like sound.

Cons:
1)Murders the bass.

The fault with Dolby headphone is that it changes the tonality to match that of a well calibrated theater.My local THX theater sounds exactly like Dolby Headphones MODE 2.
Like seeberg says,the midbass gets messed up by Dolby Headphone IF your headphone doesnt have a flat bass from 300Hz down to 40Hz or so.
After EQing my Koss by cutting from 80 to 300 db by 3 db ,Dolby Headphone
sounds damn nice.

 

[rickcr42]

Quote:

I've tried loads of DSPs, and they all a) had flaws b) lowered the absolute sound quality

what Matt said but with my add-they all suck

even something as simple as a software based crossfeed is a disaster when done in software compared to a simple passive device and multichannel is not even close to where it needs to be if high fidelity is a concern.again better done passive or beffered passive.

then when the processing power used is added into the equation i come away with DSP=Crap until i can find one that convinces me otherwise

 

[seeberg]

I'd like to see a more passive crossfeed effect-one that doesn't introduce digital artifacts and metallic reverb- but I haven't messed around with such a thing as of yet, although it doesn't mean I'm not planning on it. Since this is a DSP shootout, I'd like to see a digital crossfeed similar to what HeadRoom and Meier Audio both have. I think a more subtle effect that doesn't degrade the quality of music would be ideal. Any suggestions on that one?

,
Abe

 

[rickcr42]

Quote:

I'd like to see a more passive crossfeed effect-one that doesn't introduce digital artifacts and metallic reverb- but I haven't messed around with such a thing as of yet, although it doesn't mean I'm not planning on it. Since this is a DSP shootout, I'd like to see a digital crossfeed similar to what HeadRoom and Meier Audio both have.

my attitude is (and in my mind makes perfect sense but then again i am not totally sane

) why do a thing that can be done with a handfull of parts,that can be switched out for ZERO intrusion into the audio signal path,that is so damn simple as to be ridiulous in a DSP which requires thousand of calculations and computer power ?

that is like lowering the water instead of raising the bridge to allow a ship to pass-wrong headed and done just to do it.

ALL the crossfeeds work as advertised.The Chu Moy variant of the original linkwitz version,the Meier variant of the Chu moy and the original Meier plus the Headroom which is their own design and comes at it a bit different (passive is not an option with their method).
The plans are all readily available and easily implemented and make for a really goos first project.I would add both an input buffer and output driver to the passives to take source impedance and cable driving/load impedance out of the equation but even the simple resitor.capacitor/switch method works as intended and FAR better than any DSP implementation to date.

Surround sound does and has pissed me off for many years other than the original passive hafler method of ambience extraction.
It sounds as artifiicaial with music as it can get and not one has ever impressed me.For movies no problem but movies have a different requirement for enjoyment.The action is what holds your attention and the FX is an enhancement.
For music only ALL Suck ! Every single one.

Of course just my opinion and as always YMMV

 

[Artie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickcr42 . . . why do a thing that can be done with a handfull of parts,that can be switched out for ZERO intrusion into the audio signal path,that is so damn simple as to be ridiulous in a DSP which requires thousand of calculations and computer power ?

I'll take a shot at this.

Of course, each persons setup is different. The line-out of my soundcard, (AV710), goes to the input of a Proton preamp, which has a nice discrete component headphone amp built right in. If I'm going to do headphone listening, I simply don't power-up the rest of the system. (Crown amp, Yamaha studio monitors.)

I use iZotope's Ozone, which is a very high quality DSP. It's not one of those "toy" freebies. One of its most valuable features is a nice 4-band parametric EQ. I have one preset for headphone listening, and one preset for full system listening. It would be silly for me to construct some hardware components somewhere in my audio path when its already covered in the preset.

 

[rickcr42]

Quote:

It would be silly for me to construct some hardware components somewhere in my audio path when its already covered in the preset.

not if the alternative sounds better

in a case like yours where the headphone amp is an integrated you would use the tape monitor loop for any headphone FX so you could switch in for headphones and out for speakers