Dolby Headphone demos

Dolby headphone technology is a way of getting pseudo surround sound out of standard headphones. By using encoding algorithms to vary the waveform of the music, the ear can be tricked into thinking the sound is coming from somewhere different, in spacial terms, than it actually is.

How so? Well, your ear determines where the location of the sound is by examining the small differences in waveforms as they arrive. By faking those small differences in the waveform itself, the surround effect can be achieved.

Most content doesn't come pre-encoded with the Dolby Headphone codec, so there is hardware out there that will add the spacial layer on top of standard content to enable you to get the surround sound effect that Dolby Headphone provides. To illustrate this, we thought we'd give you the chance to grab some pre-encoded content to see the effect for yourself.

There are four videos below that you can download to check out - they're in .mov format, so you'll need to grab QuickTime to play them. It's worth having a play just to see what can be done with standard stereo kit.

Have a listen, and let us know your thoughts over in the forums. You can find out more about Dolby's Headphone tech here.

Left click to open in a new window or right-click and Save Target As to grab the files.