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What’s the difference between the X4 Dolby Headphone Technology vs. the HPA2 discrete 5.1 speakers?

April 26, 2017discrete Dolby HEADPHONE hpa2 Technology vs x4

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What’s the difference between the X4 Dolby Headphone Technology vs. the HPA2 discrete 5.1 speakers?

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Surround sound on PC games and XBOX games works differently. The HPA2 is designed for PC gaming, so it has six separate analog inputs that connect to the outputs on a PC sound card to provide individual control over the Front, Surround, Center and Sub channels. The HPA2 can therefore be used with any surround sound source generated by the PC, which is very useful because surround sound on a PC is not always in Dolby Digital format. Even when it is, the Dolby Digital stream is split up inside the PC and sent out as 6 separate channels via the sound card. In contrast, surround sound on XBOX games is transmitted over a digital optical cable and encoded in Dolby Digital format. The X4 transmitter splits this XBOX Dolby Digital signal into 6 channels and sends it to the X4 headphones in Dolby Headphone surround sound. So, even though the HPA2 and X4 are both “surround sound headphones”, they’re specifically designed for two different gaming platforms.