Sennheiser DSP 360: Does anyone have it?

[Grifter]

I am on the fence between a set of Sennheiser 535s w/DSP or a pair of 570s with out the DSP. Same price but does the DSP actually work in games with positional audio... Such as Counterstrike?

 

[KR...]

I tried out the DSP with the HD580 with DVD movies and it was quite fun. It's really only meant for DVDs.

 

[squirrelman]

I have the HD535s with the DSP360. I used it a few times and I didnt like it very much at all. I tried it out with a couple of DVDs but I dont know there was just something about it I didnt like. I like the Dolby Headphone option on PowerDVD much more. My DSP360 has sat in a drawer ever since I got it.

 

[r3cc0s]

If you use the headphone jack provided on the dsp, it lacks power. And lacks power alot. IT is only good for DVD's and it does it pretty good

It has a input in and out in rca's I suggest use the rca out's, set the headphone option on, and let a headphone amp or regular amp power it, as it would have way more power than this dsp...

it's affect isn't bad, but it has a horrible ac noise I think that damned buzzing nosie....

oh well...
it's just a toy and does it's jobs to reprodue virtual dolby pro logic

 

[tangent]

I have the DSP 360 and the DSP Pro. The DSP Pro is reasonable as a basic headphone amp, and I do recall using it for movies once or twice, but must not have been overly impressed by it since it's now hooked to one of my computers for listening to MP3s.

As for the DSP 360, I actually bought that alone, not packaged with a headphone. I consider that to be a very poor purchase. The amp is so weak that I'm right now in the process of making a generic Cmoy amp with inferior components to use where I'm now trying to use the DSP 360. From what I heard from the amp while it was on the protoboard, this is already a dramatic improvement over the DSP 360. And the Cmoy design is further tweakable, of course, whereas the DSP 360 is what it is.

Once I get the DSP 360 replaced with a Cmoy, I will be putting the DSP 360 back in a drawer for emergency use to get _some_ sound out of a system that can't drive headphones by itself. In other words, it will live out its life as a debugging tool,

 

[tangent]

I just finished my cmoy amp, and it does indeed sound better than the DSP360, despite the fact that the cmoy is made of nearly 100% Radio Shack parts, including an inferior opamp.

The highs of both amps are similar, but the bass is anemic on the DSP360 with Senn HD-570s. With Grado SR-60s, the DSP360 is even worse -- the SR-60s have good bass, but they won't _create_ it, they'll only show what the amp provides. The cmoy amp makes both headphones sound good. I can only imagine how much better a basic cmoy with better parts, or one of the tweaked designs like the Hansen or Apheared 47 varieties would sound, compared to the DSP360!

 

[Grifter]

So we have established that the DSP 360 is a piece of **** and the DSP Pro is almost as useless.... NOT getting one of those then!

 

[purk]

I have to disagree with u guys about the dsp pro. I love this...! I use it with my sr-80 and this baby really sing!! Anyway, the most important part is the media. If you are using digital cable, dvd, and cd it will sound quite good.

 

[tangent]

purk, the DSP Pro and the DSP 360 are very different. I find the DSP Pro to be a reasonable headphone amplifier for music, in a pinch. I haven't yet done a comparison against my other amps, but it is clearly better than the DSP 360.

Just as clearly, however, the DSP Pro is designed for surround-sound in movies and such. I haven't done a serious investigation into positional audio with either, so I can't help Grifter with his question, directly. All I can say is that using it for 2-channel audio is a compromise relative to using an amp designed for music.

Oh, and on the power issue, r3cc0s is indeed correct. When testing my Mated Penguins cmoy design against my DSP360, I cranked the DSP360 as high as it would go, which is a good listening volume with my least efficient phones (Senn HD-570s) on one side and my computer's sound card on the other. A more powerful input would allow more power out of the DSP360, of course, but its small size and low cost seems to demand use with low-power devices like sound cards.

Anyway, I then level-matched the Mated Penguin amp with a voltmeter to the DSP360's level -- I only had to go to 12 o'clock on the cmoy's pot. (It's a 300-degree pot, with 0 volume at 7 o'clock and 10 at 5 o'clock.)

 

[Gluegun]

Nononono!!!

You don't use one of these external processors with Counterstrike!!

You use an amp that doesnt have any crossfeed or any of this surround sound stuff on, and you just set your sound card to "2 Speaker" and use the A3D option!

I know! I use a Total Airhead (with processor OFF), and Beyerdynamic DT-831's for counterstrike! it works great!!

And for movies? Don't use those processors either! Just use Dolby Headphone, and MAYBE a crossfeed on your amp, if it has one.