Dolby headphone, Xonar DG mini review

[bobv5]

I needed a new power supply, and they had the Xonar DG on offer, so I bought one.

Everybodys ears and brains are different. Written bellow is my subjective experiance. I can offer no measurements.

Dolby headphone works. In games that support multi-channel audio output, it gives a sense of direction to sounds. It also makes listening to music through headphones more enjoyable.

GAMES
In Black Mesa, the Half LIfe 1 remake, DH works very well. If you sit and listen to the sound, you can easily tell it is not perfect, but when playing it is good enough that when you hear a monster, you can tell if it is in front or behind, and left or right.

Mass effect 3, it worked far less well. Voices of crew on the Normandy seemed to be placed correctly, but player character weapon effects are placed badly. The programmers have done something wierd, making weapon effects come from side speakers instead of center speaker, probably to compensate for the fact that it is a console game, and most consoles are connected to systems with crap center channels.

MUSIC
I have not listened to a lot of music through it yet, but so far I am happy with the results. It cannot compete with a set of nice speakers, but I cannot use nice speakers when it is late and I am typing on MTBS. It pulls the sound out of my ears, sideways and forwards, putting the sound where my speakers might be, instead of inside my head.


PSYCHOACUSTIC STUFF

When I first switched DH on, it sounded like a horrible, tacky, nasty reverb effect. After listening a while, that went away, and the position of the simulated speakers shined through. I suspect because even the best speakers are going to interact with the room they are in. An intresting effect is that when listening to music, my brain thinks the sound is coming from the speakers I have near my computer, even though they are not connected to anything. The audio image remains between those two speakers, even when I move my head. Very odd.


HARDWARE USED

I tried for a small time with Meelectronics M6 canal-phones, with those the sound image was expanded left and right, but not forwards and backwards. I had better results with Pioneer SE-A4, supra aural, open backed phones. With those front or back was clearly audiable, but it still sounded like front to back was squished smaller than it should have been.

CONCLUSION

If you care about audio, and you use reasonable quality headphones, and you can spare $20, buy one. It will not offer perfect sound, but it does an acceptable job of simulating a 500Kg surround system glued to your head. Honestly, I wont say it is good, but it sucks far less than everything else I have tried.

[cybereality]

Cool. Do you need special headphones to take advantage of the sound card, or will any kind work?

[bobv5]

Any normal headphones can be used, but I have had better results with over ear headphones than in ear ones. Probably because effects of the shape of peoples ears is not simulated.