40 T3 FEBRUARY 2022
Ultimate TV audio upgrades
SPATIAL AUDIO & ATMOS HEADPHONES
A new generation of surround sound headphones means your home cinema audio dreams
don’t have to be put on hold just because everyone else has gone to bed1
BEYERDYNAMIC DT
1770 PRO
These studio-grade headphones
from Beyerdynamic don’t
actually support surround sound
playback in the way the others in
this section do. We’ve included
them, though, because their
uncompromising construction
together with Beyerdynamic’s
sound-stage-building Tesla
headphone technology (named
after Nikola, not Elon Musk’s
cars) delivers detailed, well
constructed film sound stages.
£359, beyerdynamic.com
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APPLE AIRPODS MAX
As well as sounding as good
with music as they really
should at this price, Apple’s
debut over-ear headphones
carry a spatial audio feature
that delivers a remarkably
compelling, accurate, detailed
and dynamic virtual surround
sound experience from 5.1, 7.1
and even Dolby Atmos sources.
This system can even track your
head position so that the 3D
soundstage is always positioned
correctly relative to the screen.
From £459, apple.com2
JVC EXOFIELD XP-EXT1
This is the only current
headphone solution that
provides an external receiver
for extracting sound from HDMI
sources like Blu-ray players
and Apple TVs. These extracted
mixes are then sent wirelessly to
the Exofield headphones, where
JVC’s ‘out-of-head localisation
sound field processing’ makes
them sound like they’re coming
from an external multichannel
speaker array rather than cans
on your ears.
£999, jvc.com3
CREATIVE SXFI THEATER
Creative’s award-winning Super
X-Fi headphone tech creates a
‘holographic’ movie experience,
complete with accurately placed
positional cues and heavy bass,
that really can sound uncannily
like an external surround sound
speaker system. It can even
personalise its audio profile by
taking photos of you. Bluetooth
and Wi-Fi latency are practically
zero, too, and it ships with a
detachable mic so it can double
up as a gaming headset.
£149.99, creative.com4
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