Multichannel SACD via Dolby Headphone! (or Silent Cinema..)

[huanbo]

Hello,

I dream of being able to listen Multichannel SACD on my PS3 in headphones (I can't listen too loud late nights).

I know that the "Dolby Headphone" technology is really impressive for multichannel emulation in headphone (I've tried it).

Therefore, I would like to know if there's any way to listen Multichannel SACD's via a Dolby Headphone capable amp with the PS3 (with Multichannel LPCM via HDMI, of course).

Do you know any amp capable of that ? (I'm talking of A/V amp's, not headphone amp's)

I know that Denon and Yamaha offers similar technologies to Dolby Headphone ("Virtual Surround" and "Silent Cinema"). Have you tried them ?

Thanks for you help !

[huanbo]

Hi !

Could somebody here, with a Marrantz or Yamaha amp, try to listen to a multichannel SACD with a headphone ?

Thanks !

[FunkyMonkey]

Here's my take on it, but I'm just following it logically. I never listen with headphones, so please just follow my logic and see if you agree.

The PS3 converts the DSD SACD signal into PCM and passes it onto your receiver via the HMDI. The significance of this is that your receiver canprocess it, being as it is in PCM. (If it were in DSD, I believe the receiver coudl not process in terms of delays, etc - not relevant here though).

So....play your SACDs' multi-channel layer but tell your receiver to reproduce in 2 channel, e.g. press the 2 channel button on your remote (my Onkyo has one, for example). The receiver then tries to process a multi channel signal into 2 channel.

Now, my big assumption is that this processing can be relayed to the headphone signal in the processed form.

So in other words, the above methos supposes a multi channel high-res PCM signal can be down-mixed to a hgih-res 2 channel signal and come out the headphone socket. I know that you can get high frequency bandwidht headphones, so I suppose those are partly for SACD/DVDA listening????

[PS3SACD]

If you're listening with stereo headphones you should always select the stereo track on the SACD because then you get a stereo mix as the artist, producer and recordin engineer intended it, instead of a guess by the receiver.

Anyway, the question was about multichannel headphones..

[Yuri]

@huanbo,

Perhaps what you're looking for is something like this: the Sony MDR-DS7000, a (wireless) 7.1-channel surround sound headphones set, or its predecessor, the the 5.1 channel headphones MDR-DS6000 model.

It uses Sony's "Virtualphones Technology" (VPT). The external decoder is compatible DTS, DTS-ES, AAC and gets two digital inputs and one analog input.

I'm not sure to what extent it's suited for use with DSD or multichannel PCM. I guess the DSD-to-DTS conversion feature of firmware v2.00 would come in very handy here.



More info here and here.

[huanbo]

Thanks for pointing me to this product.

However, the Marantz and Yamaha amps already have this kind of feature and I don't need (don't want... ) a wireless headphone.

Plus those "surround sound headphones sets" (MDR-DS7000, MDR-DS6000, Philips SBC HD 1500, ... ) never have HDMI inputs.

The point is really to know if Marantz and Yamaha amps are able to output virtual Multichannel (Dolby Headphone / Silent Cinema) from a PS3 via HDMI.

And, you are absolutely right, the DSD-to-DTS feature was the solution to all my problems...