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 bed
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. $699, beyerdynamic.com
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. $TBC, jvc.com
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. $299, creative.com
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 $899, apple.com/au