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Hauppauge XFones PC-2400 wireless headphones
Dolby technology built in bundled
The USB dongle has a second button, for stepping through the channels it uses within the 2.4GHz band. So yes, the XPhones work in the same frequency range as Bluetooth, but they use a different, incompatible wireless technology. That limits you to connecting them devices that have a USB port and are loaded with generic USB audio card drivers.
Both Macs and Windows XP/Vista PCs are, allowing you to plug in the dongle and select it a sound port in the usual way for each OS.
We did get some interference with other devices. Our wireless mouse stopped working, for instance, but a single press of the XFones transmitter's Channel button fixed that. More worryingly our laptop's Wi-Fi lifeline later dropped too. We could only get it back by yanking the XFones transmitter. So this may not be the best product to pick if you use a lot of other wireless devices.
Wireless-by-USB
The XFones themselves are a decent set of wireless stereo headphones. Despite being closed, there's a fair bit of leakage at high volumes. The sound's not bad, but it could be more vibrant. The bass-boost brings music a bit of beefiness without overpowering it. But since the Dolby Headphone isn't part of the hardware, you're only going to get it if you run software that supports the technology. CyberLink's PowerDVD 7 does, and that's the app Hauppauge has chosen to bundle with the XFones.
And it's very impressive. PowerDVD allows you to switch between stereo, down-mixed surround sound and Dolby Headphone, and the difference as you move from one to the other is immediately and starkly clear. Stereo is two-dimensional, and while down-mixing gives you more of a sense of space, there's still the feeling that the sound sources are close to your ears. Dolby Headphones really pulls the sound sources away from your head for a more cinema-like sound.
It's amazing what a difference it makes listening to the likes of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and V for Vendetta when you're used to a pair a bog-standard earphones.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
