Earphones (1 Viewer)

[BobHaymond]

I have been posting for a couple of months; much good info -- which is hard to come by out here in the country. My HT/remodeling is comming along scrumptiously! Damn near finished.

One problem. My wife has difficulty hearing and is interested in trying earphones to aid in hearing the dialog. Do any of yawl have experience as to how this can be done well?

Thanx for any consideration. BH

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Well, using headphone jacks usually disables the speakers. If your reciever has outputs, or if your DVD player will output analog and digital at the same time (most will), you can use an adapter to convert the stereo RCA jacks to a headphone jack (visit Radio Shack). Plug it in and you're gold

 

[Marc Rochkind]

(Not to quibble, but at the higher-end, where you want to be for HT, they're called "headphones.")

Jeff's point about the headphone jack is well taken.

As for the headphones themselves, there are two basic ways to go:

1. Good quality regular stereo headphones, and

2. Headphones with electronics that somehow give you virtual surround sound. I've used an expensive ($500) Sony system for this for a few years, and it's terrific.

I have an HT headphone section in my book. (See signature, below.)

Also, my site points to a few sites for headphone reviews, which you definitely want to read before buying.

 

[Ted Lee]

bob -

another possibility is to simply crank up the center channel speaker. almost all the dialog comes from the center so that should help.

the only problem i see is a lot of other "stuff" (effects, etc) also comes from the center...that may cause more problems than it's worth.

also, at least for my receiver (onkyo) plugging in the headphones does NOT disengage the speakers. most receivers that i've seen usually have a A/B speaker selection - to disengage the speakers you have to deselect from those a/b buttons.