[DjAmTraX]

I see a lot of surround headphones for gaming, but none for audio.  Is there one out there?  
 
My Marantz AV8003 has Dolby Headphones, but there is no mention in the manual on how to use it.  Can someone please help?

 

[BotByte]

Those surround sound headphones are a nice way to add $50 to a headphone with a $2 line joint.
 
Headphones with the surround sound, are made to only work with the plug in or equipment they come with. This mean if you don't use the surround sound thingy, the headphones are missing a component.
 
The reason they aren't used, is because audio only headphones don't need them, they already have them.
 
Simply saying, your headphones are stripped down to make you believe the SURROUND SOUND COMPONENT is worth more money.
Look into marketing, this is the way companies make you buy this, when other companies have the same.
 
Listening to my Grados, with a echo set into the eq, it sounds as if the SURROUND SOUND is on. The component you have or bought with your headphones probably set the sound late in certain sections making it possible to feel as if the sound is all around you.
 
Simply, there is no way that a Stereo headset can broadcast four of six different sound patterns in different directions (like surround sound)
Yes, there is headphones with multiple drivers in them, yet they play different sections of the audio pattern to try to separate the audio waves to make the audio feel more define.
 
Think of surround sound as a set speaker around the room. each speaker plays different sounds from the source in different areas. (explosions behind the camera, come from behind you) A stereo plug can only conduct two sound patterns.
 
Your surround sound, is just a echo created an probably some other effects.
 
Hope my, over detailed writing works

 

[thread]

It seems to me that the only real "surround" headphone technology is the box from Smyth Research.
 
http://www.smyth-research.com/
 
Read about it on the forum, too. You must be "calibrated" in a room with a real set of speakers with tiny ear microphones... so it is profiled to your individual outer ear, the speakers, their acoustic properties in the calibration room, MINUS the signature of the headphones. You can then use any pair of stereo headphones, and it allegedly absolutely tricks your brain into thinking the 7.1 or whatever(!) audio track is being played to you in the calibration room.
 
I haven't tried it, but everyone says it's an extremely convincing effect. And I don't think anything else even comes close.

 

[yepimonfire]

 
Quote:

Those surround sound headphones are a nice way to add $50 to a headphone with a $2 line joint.
 
Headphones with the surround sound, are made to only work with the plug in or equipment they come with. This mean if you don't use the surround sound thingy, the headphones are missing a component.
 
The reason they aren't used, is because audio only headphones don't need them, they already have them.
 
Simply saying, your headphones are stripped down to make you believe the SURROUND SOUND COMPONENT is worth more money.
Look into marketing, this is the way companies make you buy this, when other companies have the same.
 
Listening to my Grados, with a echo set into the eq, it sounds as if the SURROUND SOUND is on. The component you have or bought with your headphones probably set the sound late in certain sections making it possible to feel as if the sound is all around you.
 
Simply, there is no way that a Stereo headset can broadcast four of six different sound patterns in different directions (like surround sound)
Yes, there is headphones with multiple drivers in them, yet they play different sections of the audio pattern to try to separate the audio waves to make the audio feel more define.
 
Think of surround sound as a set speaker around the room. each speaker plays different sounds from the source in different areas. (explosions behind the camera, come from behind you) A stereo plug can only conduct two sound patterns.
 
Your surround sound, is just a echo created an probably some other effects.
 
Hope my, over detailed writing works

this is not entirely true. ever heard a binaural recording? we only have two ears, and we can only hear two sources of sound, the spatial cues our brain picks up such as phase, frequency attentuation, etc, are how we hear an infinite amount of locations in sound, beleive it or not, our brain interpolates a very large amount of information it receives from all our senses. dolby headphone can apply the same principles that are used in binaural recording and use it to create a frighteningly convincing illusion of space. dolby headphone however is the only DSP i have heard that is capable of doing that correctly. it has absolutely nothing to do with echo or reverb, it has to do with phase angles, delays, frequency attentuation, etc. i also must note it only works with multi-channel material (duh). not only does it find a way to add the surround channels in, it also focuses the front soundstage so it sounds alot closer to being a front soundstage, rather then the overly exaggerated l/c/r image headphones portray.
 

 

[kn19h7]

OP that seems to be a good stuff man..
 
Well I can say listening to headphones is definitely different from listening to speakers. As the drivers are just sit on your ears, your left ear is not going to hear the driver at right side and that's why certain processing may considered desirable.
For my case I'd like to turn on surround processing even to stereo source for music listening on closed headphones which to me produces appropriate depth for the music and removes the 'feel' of fatiguing. But same setting most likely will sound awful on open headphones, I'd use crossfeed plugin like bs2b instead.

 

[MrJohnny]

In headphones there is no real such this as surround sound for, You have 2 ears. and stereo is 2 channels. thats all the surround sound you can physically have! now if you add a 3rd channel MAYbe for a Low frequency For center. But thats about it. Surround sound speakers. are just in theory 2 channels but spread out around you.  REALLY good speakers spread apart really far can give u the effect as 5.1 surround sound.

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Dolby Headphone plugin in conjunction with appropriate Channel Mixer settings in foobar2000 works well for me at least (better than all other foobar plugins and VST plugins I've tried). (preconfigured foobar2000 dl link: http://cid-87ed83e2c9fd453c.office.live.com/self.aspx/Public/foobar2000/foobar2000.zip ) - Strenghtens positional cues and you often can picture the directions in your head where the singer and instruments are positioned (or in electronica you can hear the sound effects circling around your head etc), ofc could make it a lot wider sounding than this but I think going over-the-top with it will ruin the experience too, with these settings I think it sounds most natural/realistic and work well for every song/genre. Sometimes the background noise/speech etc in some songs for example in the end can sound so realistic I have to turn my head to check if it was coming from the headphones or not.
 
The settings are:
 

(equalizer used in order to counter the changes dolby headphone plugin does, mainly to the lowend which masks fine details unless taken care of like above)
 
PS, Dolby headphone plugin MUST come under channel mixer in the active DSP list or it'll sound very bad.
 
Circ - Love Electric is a good song to test with.
 

 

[kn19h7]

Quote:

In headphones there is no real such this as surround sound for, You have 2 ears. and stereo is 2 channels. thats all the surround sound you can physically have! now if you add a 3rd channel MAYbe for a Low frequency For center. But thats about it. Surround sound speakers. are just in theory 2 channels but spread out around you.  REALLY good speakers spread apart really far can give u the effect as 5.1 surround sound.

..but then, typical stereo sources are meant for speakers, not headphones which is something slightly different
 
Crossfeed principle, from wikipedia:
Directional sound perception is based on the delay between the same sound reaching a person's left and right ears. In stereo speakers the sound from one speaker reaches both ears, although at different levels, and with a delay between one ear and another, since the speaker is placed away from the center. In headphones, such crossfeed does not occur, and the created stereo image is different from the same one heard from speakers. The crossfeed attempts to recreate the stereo image heard from speakers by mixing some signal from the left channel into the right channel and vice versa.
 
And there are also Head Related Transfer Function theories which further explain surround experience on headphones. Though the final output is still in 2 channel but the signal has been processed for headphone listening, it may sound better in terms of soundstage/separation/positioning/etc.