I have a long story of how I got introduced to headphones for movies. it started when my dad got his TV and ask for the price of surround sound and said it would take $10,000 worth of labor just to make sure the surround sound works rights in an asymmetric room. plus they said it will only be acoustically pet balance for one specific spot in the room. Everywhere else it wouldn't sound right.
Did I saw $100 surround headphones from turtle Beach at around 2010. Since my friend was a competitor on a national cable video game show and Triton was one of the sponsors, I asked his opinion of his headsets.
My concern was 3d directionality of sound. He said it improved his first person shooter games so much Daddy finally learned the dirty Little secret of why he was failing in them. with the right surround headphones he could tell where the shot came from and which direction the bullet was flying. And without seeing either can turn and shoot the appropriate person basin sound cues alone.
I asked if it would work in movies. Kings never tried but said there should be no reason it doesn't.
I try to turtle Beach x42. It has a toslink cable input that comes from the Xbox 360,. and it has a mic port for your microphone and mixes the incoming sound a players with game sound effects.
It was awesome to finally hear games sound realistic. also improve my game quite a few times being able to do stuff based on audio cues I couldn't do with inferior Audio cues.
I tried it on movies downstairs on both the Xbox 360 and the PS3, and they worked.
Then I got the PS3 for 3D movies and dad got a regular Blu-ray player. I wondered if the coaxial port would send surround signals to the headphones. Well if you find a coaxial to toslink converter, then yes surround sound does work. ...
... However there is a catch. They sound better on game machines, but only on some titles.
I found the common factor, any movie that was naturally encoded in Dolby 5.1 or higher works well with the turtle Beach x41, x42, and dss. But there are two classes of movies that are awful on a standalone movie.
They are DTS movies, and the occasional lpcm film like apocalypto which has only one audio language, pre-columbian Mayan.
the reason why lpcm doesn't work is because toslink could only hold two channels of uncompressed audio and lpcm is uncompressed. That's why the Nintendo Wii u does not work and why the Nintendo switch does not work as well.
They just thinking about Nintendo is that Nintendo's two-track headphone audio is a proprietary mix that does sound surround with no additional equipment needed. all the turtle Beach and Triton did was find a standard formula for doing the same thing given a Dolby 5.1 input and converting it to a Dolby 2 track headphone surround output.
The reason why DTS doesn't work is because the codes used in the Dolby headphone assume you have a Dolby input coming into the machine. If you have a DTS output, most machines well depending on the machine and setting either convert to lpcm 2.0, or I'll put silence.
I found a Sony headphone converter which says it does both Dolby and DTS surround sound. I admit it's the DTS sounds better then the stand-alone machine's 2.0 conversion to Dolby headphone. But it doesn't sound as convincing as a PS3 DTS to Dolby conversion and then turtle Beach converting Dolby to Dolby headphone. the reason why that is according to most people on forums is that even though it does accurately read DTS, the headphone conversion process is not as accurate.
Sony admits it's even more for those who want acoustical accuracy, not directional accuracy.
That's a weird thing on every website for my went to whether lddb.com , a LaserDisc enthusiasts website, or after years of muddling through it and talking to people I found that I need an extra piece of equipment called a AC3 RF to Dolby digital 5.1 converter.
by the way thank you led be without that information I miss I would have missed out I'm superior LaserDisc sound converted accurately through turtle Beach.
But whether lddb.com, Cruise main audio concern hi-fi, where almost everyone would rather have an lpcm 2.0 soundtrack then have a Dolby headphone surround 2.0 track, or head-fi.org, where I was one of the few people to talk about surround to headphones around converters, and literally everyone was talking about headphones for music or for high fidelity, and not for simulating surround, no one seems to believe me that there's value in headphone surround.
I posted posts on both those websites. An lddb did kick me out when they ask me "where is triple topper and his turtle Beach?" And then when I reply I get censored when I was specifically asked to the conversation, and I was saying that I'm not trying to force people into headphone surround, I'm just making my observation that until you get to about 10 people, one headphone per person is a lot cheaper and easier and guaranteed to be accurate for more people than a communal room which is asymmetrical and very expensive to install
Other say it sounds echoey, but then again they're the kind of people that walk up to each speaker and listen to the same 10 seconds of music or sound and listen to it for more than one perspective over time
Yes the sound is more accurate with a communal surround sound, mainly because the economics of a theater where thousands of people coming at once,. and just getting them out of there and back in is a lot easier than cleaning headphones for a thousand people and having them ready by the next showing. The reason why external speakers are used is because that's the economically viable large-scale solution for theaters.
however if you have a theater for 1, just slip on headphones over yourself is a lot cheaper and more accurate than trying to bounce every angle of the room. Similar arguments of the difference in economies 1000s vs 1 show why polarized 3D is better in communal theaters and shutter based 3D is better for individuals.
I'm going to my local Best buy store, the one in Montrose/fairlawn/west suburbs of Akron OH, are the day after Christmas, and I would like some help testing out a couple things. I would eventually like to find a headphone decoder that works for all 3 forms of movie soundtracks.
I'm going to bring my own headphones, a toslink surround extractor that I think had a major flaw, but can't prove, an LPCM 5.1movie, and 2 Blu-ray copies. Of the same movie, one copy in Dolby, the other in DTS.
Also one final problem I have, the Xbox one processor-based 3D sound virtualizer are weird. Dolby Atmos headphone app works perfectly great with Dolby Atmos movies. But with literally everything else, whether DTS, lpcm, or even lower forms a Dolby like 7.1,. The Dolby Atmos app is not that hot. I haven't tried Windows Sonic but that doesn't sound convincing universally either. It's like it's using game data to enhance the sound,. Because movies don't sound right.
So preferably I would like a headphone decoder just by itself, that could you give me convincing Dolby Atmos, lower Dolby, DTS X, lower DTS formats, Adele PCM formats, and I don't care what flavor virtualizer they use as long as the surround effects sound convincing enough.
One last note for all you twitchers, mixer Stars, and movie Makers. If you want a cheap low bandwidth version of surround sound and you only have a 2 track recorder or screamer like most streaming products and DVD recorders, you could process the sound before it enters the TV with a left right cable or 3.5 mm stereo cable,. Put that post converted stereo sound, and if you watch that media while listening to headphones it sounds perfectly surround,. It does not interfere with non-surround watching on twin communal speakers.
so what do I have to do understand a foreign language to listen to Dolby soundtracks on most movies, because 70% of my movies are DTS on Blu-ray, so I'm looking for some sort of solution for this to be able to listen to both English and surround and 3D video using a DTS 7.1 soundtrack, and be stereophonicly accurate. And I would like to play Nintendo games in surround sound while letting the TV speakers work too.
