A question about surround sound with headphones.

[Sky_Over_void]

So I "just" noticed a "weird" behavior of how sound is handled by VLC with Sound Mode set to Headphones. The sound seemed to be flatter with it when watching a movie in comparison to using Stereo option. I looked around and found one comment in regards to similar question:

For Stereo, no modification. For 4.0/5.1/7.1/Ambisonics, this will activate a binauralizer.

If I understand it correctly it means that if sound in a movie file is for example in 5.1 setting the VLC will try to send such surround sound to headphones or at least imitate surround setting.

Now to the proper question/s. Should I actually use this mode (headphones mode) with headphones that are not made specifically to reproduce/imitate surround sound? I think that (with my hardware) using Stereo Mode gives richer sound and is even better at imitating a feeling of space with sound (for example: better representation of feeling of passing objects while flying) then the Headphones Mode. Is there a right and wrong way of listening to movie that has surround sound in it? Edit: A better question would be: Is it going to be more accurate to watch a movie with that surround imitation on or off?

 

[pozz]

Umm, I think it will sometimes be good, sometimes bad. Just give it a try. It's likely that some material will sound better multichannel than stereo and vice versa.

There's no defined multichannel-over-headphones protocol as yet and no standard against which to judge accuracy so any implementation will have strengths/weaknesses. An interesting experiment would be to EQ your headphones for frontal localization first, and then play the multichannel material.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

There's no defined multichannel-over-headphones protocol as yet and no standard against which to judge accuracy so any implementation will have strengths/weaknesses.

The Smyth Realiser quite successfully translates loudspeaker-based multichannel protocols to headphone listening.

 

[Jumbotron]

I am not familiar with VLC, although I know of it of course. I still use Media Player Classic Home Cinema. I usually watch movies with common stereo headphones.

In my system the audio comes from onboard Realtek ALC898, which accepts from 2.0 to 7.1 speaker setup. It also handles 16 and 24 bit depth and a sample rate of up to 192 kHz. Then I have a headphone amp connected to the output of the Realtek.

Whenever I plan to see a film, the first thing I do is set the speaker configuration in Realtek Audio Manager to match that of the film I am going to see (2.0, 5.1 and 7.1 being the most common ones).

For better results, I also use the Headphone Surround Virtualization (HeSuVi) free software, which has Equalizer APO (free as well) as a requirement and allows the user to emulate different surround systems on any pair of headphones. For stereo films, I prefer Dolby Headphone Cinema. For multichannel ones, DTS Headphone:X is my choice. It may not be as good as an actual 5.1 or 7.1 speaker set, but it does a decent job and personally I really enjoy seeing films this way.

 

[pozz]

The Smyth Realiser quite successfully translates loudspeaker-based multichannel protocols to headphone listening.

There's that. It's an expensive rig though, and just one of many (disparate) options so far.