Surround Headphones Should I Get Them?

Posted by raiko on January 1st, 2010 at 04:11pm

As anybody who has ever tried a set of regular headphones can tell you, the effect of listening to music seemingly coming from the center of your head is not nearly as good as listening to music coming from a couple of high quality loudspeakers. Unfortunately, the left and right ears are effectively separated from each other which makes for a somewhat artificial sound stage. The sense of depth that you get from a quality pair of speakers is completely absent. Fortunately, surround headphones have come to the rescue.

Built into the headphones are both amplifiers and sound processors. These sound processors recreate the missing cues that give the ears a sense of space. If they function properly, you are surrounded by sound. If you like watching movies but don’t want to disturb your neighbors or significant other at 1:00AM, then surround headphones may be for you. Movies sound fantastic because you can hear things coming at you from all directions. I have actually ducked when watching an action movie with surround headphones on. In fact, with the right movie, you’ll be ducking all about the room, in a good way.

Your probably wondering how much these things cost? Well, there are inexpensive units that work pretty well or you can go crazy and spend hundreds of dollars. You really need to get out there with your favorite movie and check out different models live at your nearest retail store. The more expensive units come with outboard Dolby decoder boxes and coaxial/digital inputs. These decoders do a great job of decoding the Dolby surround and mixing it into two channels for the headset that comes with the decoder. The less expensive units have everything built into the headphones. Unfortunately, these models tend to be quite heavy. The extra weight that these headphones carry due to the electronics on board may be something to consider. Extended sessions with the headphones can become uncomfortable if you are sensitive to that kind of thing. Again, as I mentioned before, test them out at a retail store before committing to buy. Nonetheless, whichever surround headphones you decide on, you will be astonished at the difference between them and ordinary headphones.

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Tags: Surround Headphones, surround headset, surround headsets, surround sound headphones

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