Guymelef
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2014
- Posts
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- 10
Yes . Although mle knows more about this stuff but from my own experience I find directional audio just as good with stereo with ma900 and dh just distorts the soundstage of these headphones and this is worse when there r lots of sounds at the same time. You can try for yourself. Switching between stereo and dh reveals many flaws in how wrong the dh soundstage is with ma900, especially the front and back audio queues are confusing. i wouldnt waste my money on a mixamp unless I need chat,buying it just for dh is just a waste. Better get a fiio e17. i bought a used earforce dss and I have it on bypass and use it just as a dac. I just stick to linear pcm now, sound is much more fuller, louder, and soundstage is natural and accurate and i can still locate footsteps in cod.
Here is a post by ear8dmg in another thread:
Dolby Headphone effectively tries to simulate speakers over headphones. It is designed to simulate both speaker placement and the listening environment. This can be summarised as space, direction and acoustic properties of the room. DH1 simulates a well damped room with nearfield speakers. DH2 simulates a normal listening room with acoustic reflections. DH3 simulates a larger room with acoustic reflections. Some equipment with Dolby Headphone only has one type, usually DH2.
I've found Dolby Headphone works best on headphones with good resolution and good, fast, tight control throughout the frequency range. Ideally the headphones' headstage should be as central as possible. If your headphones meet this criteria I think they can be successful in giving a near-field monitor like experience (either as stereo or 5.1) with DH1.
A wide (but central) headstage can work well with Dolby Headphone. It effectively makes the soundstage larger, without otherwise affecting it. However, headphones with a frontal (i.e. sounds in front of you) headstage should be regarded as incompatible with Dolby Headphone as this is part of the Dolby Headphone effect. Generally that means anything with angled drivers (which is a technique headphone manufacturers use to give more speaker like presentation) should be avoided.
In practice, angled drivers aren't completely disasterous with Dolby Headphonebut they're not ideal. In well mastered audio with an existing 3d soundstage intended for stereo speakers, the 'geometry' is altered and the soundstage affected.
For live music recordings, especially acoustic music, I'm not a fan of DH2 or DH3. They both add reverbarations that interfere with the acoustics captured in the recording. Similarly they can be quite unpleasant when paired with video games with reverb and echo already in the game audio. For drier, close miked, studio recordings they can be acceptable but I don't find them as convinding as being in an acutal room with speakers. Likewise, some headphones include internal reflectors or similar, which give a slight reverb or echo type effect (I'm looking at you HD555...), interfereing with note decay. Add this to DH2 or DH3 and it gets messy.
For music listening, Dolby Headphone works well on mid-fi headphones with a central headstage. IMO, DH1 can be regarded as approching Hi-Fi but the DH2 and DH3 reverberations are a rather lo-fi effect. IIRC there's a resolution limit to Dolby Headphone. It operates natively at up to 24/96 so if you're using anything higher it will degrade the signal. For truly great hi-fi headphones that already give a speaker-like presentation like the HD800s paired with a great source, Dolby Headphone would be pointless and only degrade the already excellent audio experience.
For movie watching on something like HD800 (which I should point out I've not heard), might I suggest that a virtual speaker technology combined with a little crossfeed would do the job better?
Edit: I did find HD600 and HD580 pretty good with Dolby Headphone but they were only on par with my Goldring NS1000s, which are clearly not as good a headphone overall. "
Thanks .
I think i'll save the Mixamp money and go with the stereo sound.