Anyone own one of these? I know it is a bit pricey but it could be worth it if it works well with movies. Does it do real 5.1 sound or dts?
I have a rebrand of it. Muddy worthless sound. Stick with a good pair of stereo headphones and use the simulated surround.
There's no way to recreate the surround in headphones under $900 that is acceptable. .1 channel... no one can imagine an acceptable subwoofer type sound from headphones I use stereo and map front, side and back to the left/right speakers and sub to both. Works well, better than the $150 headphones I just bought.
Well don't blast. You need to be careful for sure. The worst thing you can do is try to overwhelm any background noise by cranking up the volume.
I use a pair of Pioneer Dolby Digital / DTS headphones which sound fantastic. While they are no where near a realistic a true surround sound, the do a good job however a really heavy bass from an explosion will distort a little at high volumes. Apart from that they sound fantastic.
Try a pair of Beyerdynamic DT770. You can get them as a "Maufaktur"-Edition with their resistance lowered to 32ohms, so that they are loud enough on every portable sound source and/or soundcard. I do not miss any kind of pseudo-3d-sound-processing with these, the stereo sound is so clear and sharp that it is easy to pinpoint enemys in 3D-Shooters p.ex. You can, ofcourse, go all-out and buy the MMX-300 (headset based on the DT-770s) with their external surround processor which takes your multi-channel sound source and re-calculates it for the stereo output of the headset. This combination sounds extremely good and accurate, it beats every single other solution I've listened to by far (even most "real" 5.1 or 7.1 setups don't allow you to pinpoint a virtual sound source that well). Then again, the set is well over 1000 Euros, so you can expect to get some bang for your buck. As long as there is no headtracking for sound though, the immersion is somewhat broken every time you move your head a little when trying to focus on a specific sound. In that regard, the old VFX-1 was king, even with its low resolution the immersion was great.
I've got a similar pair, http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Shop/Headphones/Audio/ci.SE-DIR800C.Shop The bass response is a lot more tame and balanced compared to most headphones. I've had mine for around 4/5 years now and would never use anything else, because they sound perfectly balanced(in terms of frequency response) to me. One major gripe though is the ear cups break very easily, both are broken on my second set now and I have to keep them taped up OH:
I'm just going to try my best to not buy great-sounding headphones. I've got a big-ass Plantronics pair and they're comfortable. Don't want to spoil myself like I did with my amplified system. I must say, though, some proper processing and I do quite well hearing things behind me (as opposed to "around" me) when I'm clutching a bomb in CS.
