Turtle Beach Ear Force DSS 5.7 / 7.1 Channel Dolby Surround Sound Processor for Stereo Headsets (Xbox 360/PS3/Windows XP/Vista/7)

This is a genuinely good product for anybody who, like me, wants surround sound but doesn't have the space or needs to keep the volume down. I'm using it with a PS3, and by switching the bd/dvd optical audio to bitstream it passes a Dolby Digital 5.1 signal to the DSS when available.

The sound difference especially with movies is a real improvement, I've been using Sennheiser HD555's hooked up to a stereo amp for a while now, and the sound stage has always been great, but this makes a difference. It widens the soundstage and separates the channels so it feels like the sound is coming from speakers in the room rather than left to right stereo in your head.

The only drawback I've found is the lack of DTS. Turtle Beach can't be faulted for this, they don't make any claims to decoding DTS signals; but where Blu-ray is concerned, any disc that uses DTS HD will only have DTS as it's standard surround option. If a Dolby 2.0 surround track is available (it has been on one or two I've tried like Avatar) this isn't a problem as the Pro Logic II processor separates the dolby 2.0 track quite nicely, adding a lot of space to the centre channel in particular. That said, when DTS is the only option and this gets downsampled to PCM stereo, I found using pro logic a little dull, but you can just hit the dolby bypass switch and receive an amped stereo signal and still take advantage of the bass boost (which is actually pretty good)... that part will come down to personal taste, you might like using pro logic on PCM stereo.

For games with Dolby Digital (like Mortal Kombat) and any DVD/Blu-ray with a DD5.1 track (that's pretty much every DVD), I'd highly recommend this... but remember the sound you get from any amp is only as good as the speakers/headphones you connect to it, so don't start with this start with a good pair of headphones (for the love of god not Turtle Beach's they sound terrible).

Pro's:
Makes a genuine difference to soundtracks where DD5.1 is available.
Acts as a pretty good headphone amp when 5.1 isn't available
Bass boost feels like a separate channel for a change and doesn't muddy up the sound (might even help with Audio Technica's which have a great soundstage but lack bass)

Con's:
Lack of DTS when at least 50% of Blu-rays use DTS HD as the master audio source.
A lot of fiddling with PS3 settings to make sure you're receiving the Dolby Digital signal (no problem on the 360, just switch it to optical)
Lot's of cables... lot's.

If you'd like to have Dolby surround sound on your games but don't have the room for the speakers or can't have them due to the fact that you might live with or next door to people who don't want to hear you play Modern Warfare 3 through a home theater system, then this is the product for you! The Ear Force takes the same chip used in the Turtle Beach wireless surround sound headphones and sticks it into a smaller unit that you can power by plugging into a USB port and then stick your own headphones into to get Dolby Headphone surround sound, and it works brilliantly.

One thing I would advise: get a good pair of headphones rather than connecting it to something like wimpy iPhone ear buds. While you will get a sort of surround sound effect, you'll miss a lot of the bass and the sound will be rather tinny. I paired my one with a Sony MDR-V150 headset, and it is beautiful. When you use it with a game such as Batman: Arkham City or a film with a good Dolby 5.1 soundtrack the Dolby Headphone processing does a brilliant job of replicating the surround effects that you'd get from a 5.1 system. When you play games such as Skyrim or Arkham City you're pretty much put right into the middle of the action and the DSS processes the 5.1 effects very well - in Skyrim I've been able to hear enemies running right up from behind me and in Arkham City fighting right in the middle of a crowd of thugs is a thrilling experience with you being able to hear enemies shouting all around you from all directions.

It also works very well with PlayStation 2 and Wii games as well as although they don't have Dolby Digital a lot of them have Pro Logic II soundtracks which the Pro Logic IIx processing present in the unit will be able to decode. The experience with that varies as some games released back in the early 2000s when Pro Logic II first appeared are mixed rather badly so you may only get some ambient sound, but as the technology matured and programmers got to grips with it some games can be really stunning - Metal Gear Solid 3 being a particularly good example as the Pro Logic II soundtrack on that convincingly conveys the ambient noise of the jungle environment and directional audio of enemies rustling through the grass almost as well as a discrete Dolby Digital soundtrack would. Of course, mostly you're going to be connecting it to current consoles but it can improve some of your older games and give a convincing surround sound experience with them too.

Filmwise as well I've found it to be just as good as having a full Dolby 5.1 system set-up in the room with you - listening to Fight Club through my headphones connected to the Ear Force DSS was a stunning experience and channel separation and bass was just as good as a "real" Dolby system, and the climactic gunfight at the end of The Kingdom is suitably convincing as well with gunshots emanating from all around you and the bass of explosions rumbling convincingly. Find a film or a game which makes good use of Dolby Digital audio, and the effect is thrilling.

In fact, in some cases I've found it's actually better than listening to a 5.1 system in a room with bad acoustics, as by dint of wearing a pair of headphones you're always in the "sweet spot" of the soundfield. It connects via an optical output for Dolby Digital signals, but you can also connect a PC or other source lacking an optical output via the included headphone output cable. The analog input is then processed using Dolby's Pro Logic IIx surround sound technology, which is a much improved evolution of the older Pro Logic matrix surround sound processing technology that Dolby used to use.

This is one of the key strengths of the product as although you might be listening to a "stereo" signal, the Pro Logic IIx will process the signal into a multichannel one and then the Dolby Headphone technology then processes into a headphone surround sound signal. How does this work? It pretty much depends on what you're playing through it. I've watched films and TV shows on Youtube that have had a Dolby Surround encoded soundtrack and the Ear Force DSS has acquitted itself very well, with the stereo soundtrack being processed into a convincing sound field with bullets flying around your head and swords swinging past your ears convincingly.

Of course, for sixty quid there are going to be some corners cut. It doesn't process DTS signals of any variety or Dolby TrueHD 7.1 surround sound as you might get on Blu-ray, with the "7.1" in the description referring to the older Dolby Digital EX technology instead (which is present on a lot of DVDs). However, nearly all PS3 and Xbox 360 games use Dolby Digital 5.1 for their sound output, with no PS3 games that I know of using Dolby TrueHD so you're not going to be missing out on the computer games front, and a film with a good Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack through this will blow any runty stereo speakers out of the water.

So, if you're looking for a compact surround sound solution for late night movies and gaming, I can wholeheartedly recommend the Ear Force DSS.

Great piece of little kit the Earforce DSS. Easy to connect up with the leads supplied. You will need to have a fibre optic output from your xbox360. Once connected and wrigged up to your headphones, (you don't need to use Turtle Beach headphones only) and set the sound output setting on your xbox dashbord to Dolby Surround it sounds amazing. Loads more spacial than just stereo and it really helps you pinpoint where things are. On games like Call of Duty, once you have got used to it you can identify where your getting shot from and the integrated mic on the turtle beach headphones works too. For great value and loads cheaper than buying a cinema sound system and not having the wife/girlfriend nagging you to turn it down, enjoy it on the headphones at full blast.