[Happyprozak]

Ok so I have a pair of Sennheisers HD 280's and a pair of Monster Beats. Now I know that many here hate the Monster Beats but lets leave that out for this thread please. The problem I've been having with my Monster Beats is that they are susceptible to hissing. Now these headphones have a slight inherent hiss to them because of the noise cancellation circuit, but if I plug them into anything but a DAP I get a significant increase in hiss. In fact, plugging them directly into my Toshiba laptop makes them buzz and hiss like crazy. Now check this out, if I plug my headphones into the Macbook Pro, and I plug in my Macbook Pro and Toshiba laptops into the same wall outlet, I can touch my Toshiba laptop and hear a buzzing sound come into the Monster Beats headphones.

Anyways, I've been reading and searching threads here and I've come across two possible solutions. The Macbook Pro has a digital output and if it's digital I'm assuming I won't get any hiss. Now, I do a bit of light gaming under Windows mustly I watch movies under both OS X and Windows. I encode my blu-ray movies and watch them under OS X in boxee and I throw in the untouched AC3 (Dolby) sound track. I've heard Dolby Headphone and I really enjoy it for movies (have not had a chance to test it with games and I don't even know if games come with AC3). So I'd like to get something that will do Dolby Headphone.

Well this search lead me to these two products

1. JVC SU-DH1 (Surround Sound Headphone Adaptor - SU-DH1)

2.Astro Gaming A40 Mixamp (Astro Gaming | Professional Gaming Equipment | Product Detail | A40 MixAmp™)

I also came across this thread (5.1 adapter/systems for stereo headphones guide.) where some pro's and con's are listed.

I have a few questions though.

1. Since these are battery powered, or at least can be, will these help me remove audio hiss? These will mainly be used to listen to music from my Macbook Pro and also to watch movies but if these also introduce a hiss then they are a deal breaker.

2. When I listen to music can I do a simply stereo pass through? Meaning I can turn off all of the sound processing.

3. One of the cons listed for the A40 mixamp is that it doesn't do DTS. I'm a bit confused on this. DTS isn't a Dolby process so what does the JVC do with the DTS signal? Or does it merely apply the Dolby Headphone algorithm to the DTS signal? I would think that Dolby Headphones only worth with Dolby signals.

Your help is much appreciated.

 

[Happyprozak]

A shameless bump.

Surely there's other people here with A40's hooked up to low impedance headphones.

 

[grumpyoldman]

just came accross your post, my MacBook Pro hisses as well, a lot with SE530s, and get this, it is nothing to do with the volume setting, they just hiss a second after connecting the jack to the phone out, like when they internal circuits make contact, independent from being plugged in or not (my older Pros could give you some good vibes on the hands when plugged in and you touched lets say a radiator), there seems to be something less than optimal with apples "isolation" electrical that is...