Will/Do 5.1 headphones help situational awareness in BOP?

[Mr_V]

Originally Posted by elneilios

The other thing I would like to consider is that I currently have a set of PC 5.1 speakers without a built in decoder so it would be quite nice to find a pre-amp that can decode the optical signal and push it to either a set of headphones or my 5.1 speakers.

The SU-DH1 won't do for that. It's purely a headphone pre-amp; it mixes the decoded and virtualised output into two channels to play back on headphones, so there's no way to drive 5.1 speakers of it.

You do of course get desktop 5.1 amps, but I don't personally know of any which also implement Dolby Headphone. You might want to ask around on A/V forums, though…

Dolby Pro Logic would also be an advantage for any non-5.1 signals that get sent to it. Any ideas on that one?

The SU-DH1 does support the so-called "music" mode of Pro Logic II in order to widen the soundstage for 2.0 inputs (though arguably this is "fake surround"). I've tried it, and it's… interesting.

I've been considering the Tritton AXPro set of 5.1 headphones since they do exactly what I just described

No, that's exactly where you don't want to go.