Headphone surround sound

[Stiletto]

Are headphones able to simulate surround sound? Obviously they can do left/right, but what about front/back?

If only certian types of headphones can do surround sound, what identification would there be that they can do it? Would they work with any 5.1 sound card?

TIA

 

[Cereal Killa]

I don't think there are suck headphones.
Never thought of it actually

 

[ToledoSteel]

I had a sound card once that was supposed to simulate surround sound. I think it was a fortissimo maybe, anyway it worked ok. The nice thing about headphones is that you hear the slightest detail anyway.

 

[zabomb4163]

i'm pretty sure the good ones do.

 

[stan03]

im really not sure that there are, unless they cost a fortune bc usually headphones have two speakers and thats all, surround sound needs at least two per side for it to work.....

 

[timmyqwest]

If you buy a decent set of headphones and plug them into a card with the goodies of an audigy 2 you can get pretty close...i'm basing this on my $20 RCA headphones i've got, i can only imagine it sounds better with $100 phones

 

[One Cool Dude]

Once some guy on the Screen Savers Lan Party had some insane headphones from Japan that were Dolby Certified and Wireless, but i think they were like $600 or so.

 

[memphist0]

Generally, the best headphones are made by Grado or Sennheiser with a price of admission starting at ~$60 and going over $15k. The ones I own are a pair of Grado RS-2s and run about $500. Anyway back to your ?. High end headphones can create a sound strage that seems multi-dimensional but it really isn't. The effect is comparable to the difference between Dolby Pro Logic and Dolby Digital 5.1. Pro Logic takes the 2 channels and expands it (puts delays between the speakers) while DD 5.1 obviously sends 5 discrete channels of sound to your speakers.

 

[alinosa]

you could always hack a couple of pairs of headphones to make surround sound... i remember reading on a website from a guy in austin that he had tried it and it worked quite well... well enough to be accused of cheating while playing UT on a lan by his buddies... at least.

 

[JupiterSSJ4]

basically if you want the sound to seem behind you, you send it only to one side, all the way over, none at all on the other side.

Then, you can slowly move it towards the other side by increasing volume on other side. Fools the mind into thinking there is surround sound when there actually isn't.