Surround Sound Headphones

Spon Farmer

Hello,

I've been researching this for a bit but either the jargon is above my head or reviewers are contradicting each other.

I'm on the hunt for wireless headphones with 5.1 / 7.1 surround sound. I'll be using them with an AppleTV 4 and possibly an xBox or Playstation in the future. Bluetooth would be preferable but I'm not sure if it is possible to have bluetooth and surround sound together.

Can an AppleTV 4 even work with wireless headphones that are not bluetooth?

Can anyone recommend some surround sound headphones ?

Cheers

EDIT: It seems only bluetooth headphones will work with AppleTV 4 and 4K. So can anyone confirm for me whether or not you can get surround sound bluetooth headphones?

[Deleted User]

No idea about Apple products but you can get surround sound wireless headsets for PS4/Xbox. It's obviously simulated surround sound and not the same as a dedicated surround sound speaker set up.

Spon Farmer

Deleted User wrote: »

No idea about Apple products but you can get surround sound wireless headsets for PS4/Xbox. It's obviously simulated surround sound and not the same as a dedicated surround sound speaker set up.

Thank you.

I used that to search "xbox wireless surround sound headphones" and there is a Turtle Beach headset with 7.1 that works via bluetooth.

So that answers the question of bluetooth being able to handle surround sound.

Yes, I had assumed it wouldn't be the same as a home cinema speakers - if that was possible it would probably melt our brains :P

Cheers

heroics

I have a set of turtle beach 500p wireless headset for the PS4 and find them great.

Had one set break and sent them back for repair and support were fairly easy to deal with. I sent back broken ones and they sent me a new set

Spon Farmer

heroics wrote: »

I have a set of turtle beach 500p wireless headset for the PS4 and find them great.

Had one set break and sent them back for repair and support were fairly easy to deal with. I sent back broken ones and they sent me a new set

Thank you. Turtle Beach does seem like the best choice for what I want.

EDIT: All the Turtle Beach headphones I'm finding are "For xBox", "For PS4", "For Switch", "For PC"

Does this mean they will only work on those devices or will they also work for AppleTV (Mac & iPhone too).

Turtle Beach Customer Service is asking for too many details just to submit a one questions.

heroics

Spon Farmer wrote: »

Thank you. Turtle Beach does seem like the best choice for what I want.

EDIT: All the Turtle Beach headphones I'm finding are "For xBox", "For PS4", "For Switch", "For PC"

Does this mean they will only work on those devices or will they also work for AppleTV (Mac & iPhone too).

Turtle Beach Customer Service is asking for too many details just to submit a one questions.

I’ll be honest I don’t know. I’ve never tried to use them with anything other that the PS4.

I use wireless sennheisers for my work pc/phone.

Spon Farmer

heroics wrote: »

I’ll be honest I don’t know. I’ve never tried to use them with anything other that the PS4.

I use wireless sennheisers for my work pc/phone.

Okies.

No harm in buying and trying.

heroics

Spon Farmer wrote: »

Okies.

No harm in buying and trying.

Google the model before you buy. Just had a look and my 500p does not support surround sound except on PS4 https://support.turtlebeach.com/hc/en-us/articles/218550558-Stealth-500P-Limited-PC-Compatibility?mobile_site=true

Spon Farmer

heroics wrote: »

Google the model before you buy. Just had a look and my 500p does not support surround sound except on PS4 https://support.turtlebeach.com/hc/en-us/articles/218550558-Stealth-500P-Limited-PC-Compatibility?mobile_site=true

Will do.

_CreeD_

https://www.sony.ie/electronics/headband-headphones/mdr-hw700ds

I've had these for almost a year and love them, surround quality is excellent, they are very comfortable and I've never had dropouts. But the 4K pass-through is limited to 30fps/no HDR, their blurb on support is intentionally vague but you will not want it inline for UHD. I use ARC on a non-4k source (so DD+) and a dedicated audio-output on my bluray player for the master HD formats.

Sorry just re-read about avoiding jargon. To be clear this comes with it's own surround decoder and wireless unit, your TV does not have to support any wireless format as the headphones just talk to it's own unit. That unit can have standard analog stereo, SPDIF (typical digital) or HDMI input. ARC, if supported by your TV is kind of a loopback audio channel over HDMI. So say your TV has an ARC enabled HDMI input and you have a non-4k source (like a freesat box, old XBOX etc.) then the best way to connect this up is the HDMI from that source goes into an input on the Unit, then use another HDMI to connect the unit's output to your TV's ARC enabled HDMI. So the unit is now inline between the 2, the unit will pickup and output audio from your source normally but ARC also allows the TV to send audio back down the same HDMI cable so that anything that is playing on the TV (not just your inline source) can have it's audio output to the unit and headphones. If you don't have an ARC HDMI port on the TV then you should have a SPDIF out, or at worst simple stereo outs.
You can also use ARC without a source, say you only have one source box and it is 4k/HDR and you don't want to lose that by using this unit inline then you connect that source to another HDMI input on your TV, nothing inline. Then simply connect another HDMI cable from the ARC input on your TV to the output on the Unit - I know, it sounds wrong since since your expecting audio to flow from an input to an output, in reverse but that is how ARC works. Basically whether you have a source on the end or not you can think of ARC as sharing the HDMI cable as an output FROM your TV.
As I mentioned above though most TVs will re-encode audio to DD (Dolby Digital, lossy 5.1) or DD+ (the same as 7.1), which is still decent but if you want to use Blurays (1080 or 4k) with their lossless HD streams you won't want to use ARC for those, many bluray players now come with 2 HDMI outputs - 1 normal/mixed video/audio and the other audio only. You can connected the Audio only directly to the unit and simply switch inputs when you need to. There is a fair enough difference to warrant this.

Spon Farmer

_CreeD_ wrote: »

https://www.sony.ie/electronics/headband-headphones/mdr-hw700ds

I've had these for almost a year and love them, surround quality is excellent, they are very comfortable and I've never had dropouts. But the 4K pass-through is limited to 30fps/no HDR, their blurb on support is intentionally vague but you will not want it inline for UHD. I use ARC on a non-4k source (so DD+) and a dedicated audio-output on my bluray player for the master HD formats.

Sorry just re-read about avoiding jargon. To be clear this comes with it's own surround decoder and wireless unit, your TV does not have to support any wireless format as the headphones just talk to it's own unit. That unit can have standard analog stereo, SPDIF (typical digital) or HDMI input. ARC, if supported by your TV is kind of a loopback audio channel over HDMI. So say your TV has an ARC enabled HDMI input and you have a non-4k source (like a freesat box, old XBOX etc.) then the best way to connect this up is the HDMI from that source goes into an input on the Unit, then use another HDMI to connect the unit's output to your TV's ARC enabled HDMI. So the unit is now inline between the 2, the unit will pickup and output audio from your source normally but ARC also allows the TV to send audio back down the same HDMI cable so that anything that is playing on the TV (not just your inline source) can have it's audio output to the unit and headphones. If you don't have an ARC HDMI port on the TV then you should have a SPDIF out, or at worst simple stereo outs.
You can also use ARC without a source, say you only have one source box and it is 4k/HDR and you don't want to lose that by using this unit inline then you connect that source to another HDMI input on your TV, nothing inline. Then simply connect another HDMI cable from the ARC input on your TV to the output on the Unit - I know, it sounds wrong since since your expecting audio to flow from an input to an output, in reverse but that is how ARC works. Basically whether you have a source on the end or not you can think of ARC as sharing the HDMI cable as an output FROM your TV.
As I mentioned above though most TVs will re-encode audio to DD (Dolby Digital, lossy 5.1) or DD+ (the same as 7.1), which is still decent but if you want to use Blurays (1080 or 4k) with their lossless HD streams you won't want to use ARC for those, many bluray players now come with 2 HDMI outputs - 1 normal/mixed video/audio and the other audio only. You can connected the Audio only directly to the unit and simply switch inputs when you need to. There is a fair enough difference to warrant this.

That is still too much jargon for me. :eek::o

Thanks for the input - I'll have to read this a few times to get my head around it.