Hi guys, I just got a pair of HD555's and they sound great.

But anyone familiar with PowerDVD, you notice how they have an option for Dolby digital, etc? Which would you prefer I use?

Would using any other kind of playback (such as dolby surround) have a negative effect on the headphones? Would they sound worse as opposed to stereo? It wouldn't damage the headphones themselves would it?

Just curious, thanks

[Scottyyy]

Stereo would sound best, seeing as they're stereo headphones. But it wouldn't damage them to use anything else.

[NicolasB]

I'm not familiar with PowerDVD, but there are two possible things that option might do.

1) It might mean, "don't let the soundcard do any decoding of the soundtrack at all, just pipe the unprocessed bitstream out of the digital output to an external decoder". In this case switching it on will mean you won't hear anything at all out of the analogue outputs.

2) Or, it might mean "decode the signal to a 5.1 or 7.1 analogue signal". In that case only the front two channels of the soundtrack will make it to the headphones, while the centre and rear channels will simply get lost. This will sound much worse than downmixing to stereo, because downmixing preserves something of the centre and rear channels (so you can actually hear the dialogue, for instance).

So, either way I would stick to stereo.

Originally Posted by NicolasB

I'm not familiar with PowerDVD, but there are two possible things that option might do.

1) It might mean, "don't let the soundcard do any decoding of the soundtrack at all, just pipe the unprocessed bitstream out of the digital output to an external decoder". In this case switching it on will mean you won't hear anything at all out of the analogue outputs.

2) Or, it might mean "decode the signal to a 5.1 or 7.1 analogue signal". In that case only the front two channels of the soundtrack will make it to the headphones, while the centre and rear channels will simply get lost. This will sound much worse than downmixing to stereo, because downmixing preserves something of the centre and rear channels (so you can actually hear the dialogue, for instance).

So, either way I would stick to stereo.

Great advice, but it does sound pretty damn amazing in Dolby Digital as well

[cribeiro]

Use some software featuring "Dolby Headphone". This will mix the 5.1 or 7.1 into two channels in such a way that you can plug your regular headphones (L/R) and enjoy a truly surround experience. A fast google search yields WinDVD 3.0 as a good candidate. If you decide to do it, let us know the outcome (I don't do it myself, lacking an external audio soundcard for my EM-noisy laptop).

[StevieDvd]

I was just about to post a similar response saying you are probably just using the option to listen to a Dolby simulation designed to play over stereo headphones.

If it sounds OK and you prefer it to stereo then nothing to worry about. You may just find it a bit gimmicky after a while and switch back to stereo.

[Tejstar]

Personally when listening to music on my PC I will always switch off any kind of processing and stick to pure stereo. With gaming/movies I tend to enable Dolby Headphone as I tend to find it gives a more cinematic presentation.

[coliam]

Agreed. Surround sound for movies can be very good on a decent set of phones.
You tend to lose a bit of 'impact' , but the spaciousness more than makes up for it.
Music is best kept in Stereo.