Which optical headphones?

[Gimli13]

Hi all,

Having recently purchased some Shakoon x-tactic 's and decided to send them back because of their useless sound I am once again in the market for some headphones! Don't get me wrong, for games they seem fine and certainly do the job more than adequately but listening to music is just awful. Full of distortion, and when you try PLII you get a load of digital noise to boot. Not sure if I just have a duff pair but would not recommend on my experience.

So, the problem. I only have an optical out source and would like a pair of headphones to work with this. Since the shakoon's I have been looking around and have ruled out 'actual' 5.1 headphones - i.e with more than one speaker in each ear. Purely on the basis that they all seem to be around the same quality range. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I have recently been looking at some pioneer headphones, in particular the SE-DIR2000C's. Does anyone know what sort of reception 'angle' you achieve with them? I ask only because I read somewhere that the SE-DIR800C had a particularly narrow reception 'angle' and was curious as to whether or not they have fixed this.

Also, am I correct in assuming that dolby headphone is generally regarded as better than the equivalent sony encoding?

To sum up, I would like some decent sounding headphones that can accept an optical link. They will be used for Music, Films and Games. Wired/wireless doesn't bother me really as long as the wireless connection is reliable.

Any comments/suggestions appreciated.

Thank You,

Gimli

[torr1x]

I have the Pioneers, i can move 80 degrees either way, basically anywhere in the room, but not next door.

Sound for games is awesome, films very good (but not quite as loud as games). Surround effects are superb, feels like the effects are in the room not coming from headphones, much better than 5.1's (i had the trittons which by all accounts are similiar to the sharkoons) - i know what you mean. No idea on music sorry. See other threads on them, don't forget you can also plug in any set of wired headphones to the box.

[torr1x]

(and welcome to the forum )

[Gimli13]

torr1x,
Cheers for the reply, much appreciated.

Can't complain with that angle, was worried I would be pinned to a spot to watch a film, not that I usually run around whilst watching a film of course!

Unfortunately everything so far points to me spending about £300 quid on a pair of headphones . Are they worth that much?!?

Also, if you watch movies with them you (or anyone else) might be able to clear some confusion regarding dolby headphone (DH).

I will be using the headphones with the source being a PC, as I understand so far DH takes a 5.1 source and converts it to 'virtual surround' for headphone use, fair enough.
Here is where I get confused, the player I use is PowerDVD Ultra and I found in there an option to output audio using DH. Do I want to select this for use with the headphones or do I leave it as spdif out and let the headphone box do the decoding/encoding?

Would it make any difference either way??

Cheers,

Gimli

[torr1x]

Originally Posted by Gimli13

torr1x,
Cheers for the reply, much appreciated.

Can't complain with that angle, was worried I would be pinned to a spot to watch a film, not that I usually run around whilst watching a film of course!

Unfortunately everything so far points to me spending about £300 quid on a pair of headphones . Are they worth that much?!?

Also, if you watch movies with them you (or anyone else) might be able to clear some confusion regarding dolby headphone (DH).

I will be using the headphones with the source being a PC, as I understand so far DH takes a 5.1 source and converts it to 'virtual surround' for headphone use, fair enough.
Here is where I get confused, the player I use is PowerDVD Ultra and I found in there an option to output audio using DH. Do I want to select this for use with the headphones or do I leave it as spdif out and let the headphone box do the decoding/encoding?

Would it make any difference either way??

Cheers,

Gimli

I'd let the box do the decoding ... i think theres 3 different DH sound settings, 3 different bass assist settings, does a good job.

Are they worth £300 ? I can't really answer that for you, to me they are after wasting nearly £90 on the trittons these are worlds better, load up cod4 and fire the m60e4, my word !!

I'll test out some music on them and see how they sound .. will get back to you tomorrow

[Gimli13]

True, appreciate your opinion. If you feel like that no doubt I will as well.

I had a look at the tritton website, they appear to be *exactly* the same. Just a re-branded variant.

Cheers for that, much obliged. Fingers crossed they are equally impressive with music as they are with games! If you read this before you manage to test the music could you let me know how it copes with PLII, since this was where it mainly went wrong for the shakoons. Also, is there any discernible 'hiss' or noise produced? Worried about the wireless thing. The point in me getting these is to get away from the noisy analogue out from my pc so would be annoyed to get the same problem with digital out.

Thanks Again,

Gimli

[Gimli13]

Hey torr1x, any news?
Just had a quick (longing) look on audiocubes again and noticed the price has gone up to $499, think it was $459 last time I checked. Bah.
Captive market I suppose.

Cheers

Gimli