Acoustic Research Wireless Surround Sound Headphones

By Grant Clauser

Putting on headphones may seem like the opposite of what you’d want for enjoying your home theater. But there are times when you can’t crank the volume of traditional speakers. Apartment dwellers and family folks often are forced to turn down their movies and music or risk having their remotes taken away.

Enter Acoustic Research with a new set of wireless headphones that aim to solve that and a few other problems.

The AW791 Wireless Surround Sound Headphones do two very cool things: wireless connection to your audio source and virtual surround sound. They’re powered by a set of included NiMH rechargeable batteries and the base station RF transmitter doubles a battery charger. The large earcups and padded head strap make them very comfortable to wear. There’s a power button that also doubles as a frequency selector so you can change channels easily. Volume is controlled by a dial on the right earphone.

Instead of using the headphone port from your receiver or DVD player, you can digitally connect the AR phones with either an optical or a coaxial digital audio cable. For analog sources there’s also a set of stereo inputs.

Having three inputs on the back allows you to switch between them if you have multiple sources. I connected a DVD player with an optical cable (one is supplied) and a DirecTV receiver with a coaxial cable. A button on the front of the headphone’s base station allows you to easily switch sources. If you have a receiver that includes a digital out, then you’d only need to use one of the ports and use the receiver to do the source switching.

Aside from the convenience of being wireless, these headphones come with another real enhancement over other headphones—true Dolby Digital decoding. The AW791 incorporates the same Dolby Digital decoding that you’d find in home theater receivers or DVD players. Once the digital data is decoded, AR’s virtual surround sound algorithms kick in to give you a near 3-D audio experience with just two speakers stuck to your head.

The results were pleasingly effective when I listened to several action movies with the headphones. Rear imaging, front-to-back and side-to-side effects were convincingly done with excellent detail. The whole impression was that of being surrounded by sound rather than feeling it in the center of your skull, which can often happen with headphones. Soundtracks had a sense of space and distance, as if the speakers weren’t right on top of your ears. The bass was especially powerful, which led to richer overall sound in effects and music. I was also impressed with their music reproduction when playing the CD soundtrack from O Brother, Where Art Thou?

One thing the headphones could not reproduce, however, was a convincing virtual front center channel. Dialogue was clear, but not centered up front like you’d want from a conventional 5.1 system.

The headphones can also make a virtual surround sound effect from a stereo source, though it does a much better job of it when it starts with a Dolby Digital source.

As a wireless product, the headphones were superior performers, though susceptible to the same problems of other 900 MHz products. In my basement—a trap for RF noise and other interference—there was a little hissing or white noise until I moved the base station above the level of the headphones when I sat on the couch.

When I took the product to my less-noisy living room, I got a clean connection anywhere I went, even outside and across my backyard. I could cut my grass while using the headphones to listen to music on my CD player in the house. The manual states that the transmitter can reach up to 300 feet, though to do that I had to go outside and down the street. I lost the signal completely when standing in my neighbor’s yard.

With the AW791 you get the benefits of making your audio listening wireless without annoying your family or neighbors and without sacrificing surround sound.