DIY Surround Headphones

surround headphones

I was stumbling through HeadWize‘s project archive the other day when I came across Steve Connor’s Poor Man’s Surround Headphones. He used a pair of Sony MDR-CD60 for the base and added three pairs of ear buds. One pair is used for the front channel and two for the rears. The rears have their own amp with the bass turned up to increase the separation. He used a Sound Blaster Live! card for the source. If you are interested in amplifiers and other sound projects, you should definitely have a look at HeadWize.

13 thoughts on “DIY Surround Headphones

  1. thanks for the link eliot.

    steve = musician who hates the “surround sound” headphones they try to pawn off on people…so, I usually end up making my own sound equipment. this one seems very much worth a look!

  2. is it me or is anything that is ‘hack a day’ a poor mans guide to something? why not make a more expensive way to do something? How about a $45,000 camera filter

  3. #9 (robert)

    Sure… if you do the $45,000 camera filer… it probably would be posted if its a hack and someone sends in the tip…

    Then…one of us will get a similar result for $45 :P Might not be as clean as the $45,000 one – def. not as pretty. Most hacks are born out of need/want. Hack does not mean cheap… but it also does not mean that it must be expensive. If a hack happens to be cheap, that does not change much (other than the weight of one’s wallet :P)

  4. I’ve made a new audio hack. It’s a speaker who is running by a ”jack” of ear-phones .
    Go see that on my web site, in the ”low” of my site ( sorry for mistakes, I’m francophone ). My site is in french, but you will understand whit the pictures!

  5. Better late than never. 2012 no 1881, that’s right! Eighteen eighty one marks the first demo of binaural sound. Quote! “People were able to discern the position of singers and instruments in the orchestra”. We have just two ears. When I hear of “surround” headphones I cringe. Worst of all is where to put that extra mono speaker that goes in your forehead. Movie, music, and game sound is all faked up from tracks of mono sound. Binaural sound is captured whole and gives the equivalent of an infinite number of channels even above and at great distances. All of this with just 2 channels of audio and ordinary headphones. The sources need hacked not the human interface!

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