hi guys,
i'm looking for the "cheapest" way to listen to "decent" (not necessarily perfect!!) surround sound (or virtual surround) through headphones,
when watching dvds on my macbook pro. i don't have an amp, so if
an amp and/or software are part of the solution, their price should count
one possibility i thought of was to use handbreak with a very high kbps and dolby prologic downmix, to make a copy of the movie with high quality video,
and dolby prologic encoded audio. then use some headphones that can understand dolby prologic encoded audio. but this will take quite some work every time i want to watch a movie! (AND i'm curious if you guys think this would even work?!)
below are the other possibilities i thought of. other than 4), i don't know if the others are even doable! and i don't know which would be the simplest
(cheapest+decent?!).
1) i was wondering if there are any headphones that plug into the mac's optical
out and process the multichannel audio to give a surround sound feeling.
2) alternatively, maybe there's a way to make the mac encode the output using dolby headphone technology, then use some headphones that understand this technology
3) or maybe there's a way to make the mac process the multichannel audio on the fly and produce a 2 channel output that travels through regular stereo headphones but sounds like surround sound? [theoretically, this should be possible!!!! after all, we only have two ears, and so it is a matter of correctly mixing the different channels with the right phase lags and volume changes!!)
4) then there's always the possibility of getting a decent (cheap?) amp that uses dolby headphone technology and has an optical in, and combine it with the correct set of headphones?
help?
thanks a bunch!!
i'm looking for the "cheapest" way to listen to "decent" (not necessarily perfect!!) surround sound (or virtual surround) through headphones,
when watching dvds on my macbook pro. i don't have an amp, so if
an amp and/or software are part of the solution, their price should count

one possibility i thought of was to use handbreak with a very high kbps and dolby prologic downmix, to make a copy of the movie with high quality video,
and dolby prologic encoded audio. then use some headphones that can understand dolby prologic encoded audio. but this will take quite some work every time i want to watch a movie! (AND i'm curious if you guys think this would even work?!)
below are the other possibilities i thought of. other than 4), i don't know if the others are even doable! and i don't know which would be the simplest
(cheapest+decent?!).
1) i was wondering if there are any headphones that plug into the mac's optical
out and process the multichannel audio to give a surround sound feeling.
2) alternatively, maybe there's a way to make the mac encode the output using dolby headphone technology, then use some headphones that understand this technology
3) or maybe there's a way to make the mac process the multichannel audio on the fly and produce a 2 channel output that travels through regular stereo headphones but sounds like surround sound? [theoretically, this should be possible!!!! after all, we only have two ears, and so it is a matter of correctly mixing the different channels with the right phase lags and volume changes!!)
4) then there's always the possibility of getting a decent (cheap?) amp that uses dolby headphone technology and has an optical in, and combine it with the correct set of headphones?
help?
thanks a bunch!!