Headphones and Surround Sound

I've got a Sony DAVS500 one-box home cinema system, thin wooden floors and neighbours who can hear a mouse break wind in the next county. Because of this, I'd like to buy a decent pair of cordless headphones and still listen to surround sound. I've seen Sony have a pair of surround sound headphones, but they come with their own decoder and are very expensive.

Can anyone in the forum tell me if I actually need a separate decoder when there's already one built into my DVD player? Are there any surround sound headphones which don't come with a separate decoder? Hell, can I get away with any old pair of bins?

Cheers,
HB

[Bogside]

I am in no way an expert here but I would be very surprised if you could get headphones without a decoder - unless you go for some sort of "virtual" surround through stereo speakers which I would suggest with headphones is likely to be pants.

The amp will pass the surround signal along the headphones but something has to be at the other end to decode the signal - in simple terms tell which signal to go to which speaker within the headphones.

You could use any set of cordless 'phones but you would only get stereo sound - a waste in my opinion.

Hmm. So stereo headphones aren't going to work (which was a stupid line from me in the first place, now I think about it), but you're saying that I wouldn't need the separate amp and processor that Sony include because I can use the ones I already own?

I hope that's right. If only Sony did the headphones on their own! I'll have see if anyone else does instead. Thanks for your advice, Bogside!

[NicolasB]

Dolby Headphone is quite impressive, IMO - but you need a lot of processing power to do it. Cheapest all-in-one device I know of that has it is the Denon A1SR which will set you back well over £2K. I've been saying for ages that someone ought to do a stand-alone Dolby Headphone decoder with optical/coax digital input and stereo line-level outputs, but no one ever listens....

[chriskenrick]

Don't know about availability over there in the UK, but perhaps http://buy.sennheiserusa.com/ASP/Sen...pdf/dsp360.pdf might be something like you are looking for. Place here in Australia has it on sale for $200AU at present

[MarkE19]

Years ago when I was living at home with my parents (and before DVD and Dolby Digital) I bought the Sennheiser Lucas (same sort of thing as above). Gave Dolby Pro Logic through sterio headphone. At the time is was amasing, but I don't know how well it would stand up today. I'll have to dust it off and give it a go.

Mark.

[NicolasB]

The Pioneer SE-DIR1000C is probably what you want - cordless headphones with Dolby Headphone processing - but as far as I know it's only available in Japan.

[tonytigerrr]

I have the Sony DS-5100 IR-cordless surround sound headphones - they are apparently the only ones licensed by dolby. They cost £300 and there is also a £600 version, which have some extra features.

They work pretty well, although the centre channel seems a little echoey at times - good channel separation and bass is pretty good although does not have the impact of a good speaker system.

It has a seperate processor with one digital input and handles dolby digital and DTS. There is a headphone jack so two people can listen on headphones, or if you prefer corded to cordless (there is a little hiss).

I agonised for some time over whether to spend this much on a pair of headphones but now I'm really glad I did. Most of my viewing is restricted to late at night so I cant have the full sound system blaring away. I'm especially pleased because the company I bought them from forgot to charge my credit card!!!!