Using Z9X with wired headphones

Hi all!

I'm considering to buy Z9X and I could find every possible answer on this forum except for "how to use it with wired headphones".
I will be changing my whole setup, TV, Soundbar, media player.
Unfortunately not many TV and probably none of the soundbars have 3.5mm headphone jacks.
So the only option left is to connect my headphones directly to Z9X, as it seems to have such option.
However there are some questions:
- Will audio switch automatically from passthrough to soundbar to downmixing to stereo and go through 3.5mm instead of HDMI?
- If answer to the above is "no" - would I need to change sound settings every time I want to watch a movie at night?
- Are there any issues with connecting headphones to Z9X?

And yes, I prefer wired headphones for the sound quality and no issues with audio delay/lag.

Thank you for all your input and suggestions!

 

The Z9X does not support headphones directly - whilst there is an AV output on the back, this is a 3.5mm AV jack with video, L&R Audio and ground. L&R are tip and first ring, video is second ring and ground is sleeve.

Video is of course composite and audio is line level so would need a headphone amplifier to drive headphones. HDMI audio can pass through concurrently.

 

Thanks for the quick reply Markswift2003, appreciated!

So, basically, what are you saying is that there's no straight forward way to connect headphones to my planned setup without a hassle of having additional devices, such as headphone AMP? Where do I even connect it to?
This is a bit disappointing, frankly. Am I the only night owl who would like to enjoy a movie without keeping all family awake? How do you work this problem? I don't need an AV receiver, there's no other devices to be connected to TV, so AV receiver is a bit of overkill, isn't it?

Thanks!

 

Only the Neo players come with Headphone amplifiers build-in. The Neo X has even a top class version included.

On standard models using Bluetooth headphones is the way to go. Neo models even offer 2-way Bluetooth in HD for headphones.

 

Google Headphone Amp - there are hundreds of them and you don't need to spend a fortune. Easiest would be to get one with standard Line In which would just connect to the AV jack (I think the 3.5mm plug > phono lead comes with the Zidoo - not sure on that, can't remember, but it's easy enough to get one).

Other options are TOSLink via the S/PDIF or USB.

 

Well, that's cool, but jumping from 200 EUR to 1000 or 2000 wasn't my plan

I don't mind investing in good Bluetooth headphones, but how about lag and consequential lip sync issues? I don't think Z9X has aptX LLC Bluetooth. Or would I need to go into settings every time I switch between speakers and headphones? Unless audio delay can be configured for each output permanently - this is a hassle. Also, sound quality will suffer inevitably.

So you saying connecting headphones to AV won't work, but connecting amp to AV and then connecting headphones to it will? I can basically get AV->Stereo converter and connect headphones directly then?

 

No - as I said, the AV output is line level - so you need an amplifier to get to headphone level (and match impedance).

 

I might need to do some reading on "line level".
Anyhow, if I'm going to place a separate amp for headphones wouldn't it be wise to connect it via SPDIF instead of AV? Or would there be decoding issues with SPDIF passthrough to amp?
This is all very confusing

 

Yes it would be preferable to use S/PDIF - I was just trying yo keep it simple.

 

I appreciate it
What about decoding the audio then? If media is, say, DD TrueHD or DTS-HD MA, it is my understanding that Z9X is able to either passthrough it to a more capable device to decode (soundbar, AV received, etc.) or downmix it to a Stereo.
Does this means that if I plan on plugging headphones via SPDIF I would need to switch passthrough mode to PCM (or however "internal decoding" named in Z9X)?

 

I assume audio is downmixed automatically to stereo on Line Out (3.5mm AV jack) and for S/PDIFF you can choose Raw or Stereo output without affecting HDMI.

So no, you won't have to switch anything.

 

May I contradict that statement?
Setting both HDMI and SPDIF to RAW is not supported and will result in only SPDIF working with RAW. This is specifically mentioned by Zidoo as a restriction!

 

Of course you can - but I don't quite understand what you mean - I just set my Z9X to HDMI RAW and S/PDIF RAW and played a Dolby Digital+ track which was output as a DD+ bitstream over both HDMI and S/PDIF.

I then changed S/PDIF to Stereo PCM and it bitstreamed over HDMI and produced PCM stereo over S/PDIF.

 

Then I got informed wrong by Zidoo. Asked specifically about that. Thanks' for testing.

 

Just so we are clear Gents, by RAW you mean bitstream passthrough to whatever this output is connected to (e.g. AV Receiver, which will do the decoding), correct?
Question then, in case of setting SPDIF output to Stereo, who will do the downsampling from whatever audio format? X9S will? Even if it's DD TrueHD or Atmos track?

 

The SOC does the downmixing in HW with all models of all generations.

 

Yes, it can always downmix S/PDIF to Stereo PCM and AV Out to Analogue Stereo..

 

Btw will it correctly fold all channel's, from any layout into stereo or just extract the left/right channels, say from a 5.1/7.1 stream?

Alternative with some restrictions, i may recommend a Steelseries GameDac, which i personally use. The main reason being i want spatial audio and not just a basic downmix. The GameDac will take a AC3 5.1 stream via spdif and uses the DTS Headphone:X 2.0 mode to-do the processing. The "funny" part is, it does not support DTS streams, since this setup uses the Playstation 4 mode and i guess the PS4 has no DTS license.

I wish there would be a DAC with Dolby Atmos for Headphones, which i used before on my HTPC via windows app, yet i could not find any hardware device with support for it. So DTS is the next best thing.

Overall i'm happy with the setup and prefer the "out of my head" surround experience.

There is one more spatial audio alternative via Creative X3/4 DAC's, which have there own spatial audio system, yet they try to simulate a 5/7.1 speaker system in a room, which as a result adds a lot of "unnatural" reverb to simulate the room, which i personally don't like.

 

DTS and Dolby streams contain metadata for a stereo downmix and the Zidoo uses that. There is no spatial stuff going on though - it's just what the sound engineer set when he did the mix and to be fair, it's mostly automated.

 

Yeah i'm "spoiled" by the Atmos headphone app for windows and can't go back to normal down-mixing anymore.
Since i own good Beyer's headphones, most of the time i even prefer this setup vs my normal older 5.1 speaker system.
The initial reason was watching movies at night, while living in a apartment building.

PS: My dream would be to use the HeSuVi filters as select-able option for my Jellyfin client and let the server transcode a spatial audio stream.... yet while possible, this is very complex and i don't have the time for this atm.