Am about to invest in a new media setup and currently thinking about audio.
Most of the times I will be listening in headphones so I do not disturb the rest of the family. What is the best setup here?
I want all the latest fancy TrueHD, Atmos and DTS:X features but in headphones.
The wiki page Audio setup and information has great information but not about when using headphones. Do I need to passthrough audio into an external receiver to get Atmos into my 2.0 headphones? Or can Kodi/OSMC decode the audio stream so I get that virtual Atmos experience in my headphones?
You’d best pass it to your AVR
Sam
Thank you Sam for the response.
Can you explain why it’s best to passthrough it into a AVR?
Is it a license issue? If I have understood it right, on Windows 10 you can download/buy software and get Dolby Atmos decoding in all applications and games. Maybe that is not possible on Linux or Vero 4k+?
Does it exist a external small DAC that can do all the fancy audio profile decoding into one headphone?
Normal DTS:X or Atmos tracks will not be decoded and sent to a headphone using a HRTF to emulate 3D surround audio on the fly. Connecting headphones to your AVR which decodes the 3D audio tracks will make the AVR only decode the base Dolby TrueHD/Digital+ track of Atmos or the base DTS-HD MA/HRA track of DTS:X and then mix it down to stereo (or use a surround emulator, depending on the AVR). There won’t be any 3D audio for headphones from conventional 3D audio tracks. The only hardware that is supposedly doing this would be this: https://smyth-research.com/
Besides that, this is only possible with live on the fly Atmos for headphones from a PC or console or pre-encoded STEREO DTS Headphone:X or Atmos for headphone tracks. Those are already encoded stereo tracks which use a HRTF… But decoding a conventional 3D audio track and sending it to stereo headphones using a HRTF doesn’t work (it would sound logical to do this as the information is 3D audio objects which you theoretically could use for this, but it’s not meant to work this way according to Dolby and DTS).
That’s pretty simple… It’s possible with games as they create their audio environment on the
fly, often even with hight information. It’s more or less trivial to make 3D audio or a HRTF emulation for headphones out of that. But a media player is only playing back 2D audio tracks or already encoded 3D audio tracks. To decode Atmos or DTS:X and work with it, you need a license and then you haven’t figured out the HRTF side of things yet. Either you find an AVR/processor that can do this or nothing can… Maybe the above mentioned hardware can help you with this 
When Vero decodes Atmos or DTS:X, it’ll only decode the Dolby TrueHD/Digital+ or DTS-HD MA/HRA base track to a surround PCM track. Without a license you can’t properly work with the 3D audio objects.
Thanks for the detailed response.
What I think you are saying is that it does not currently exist a way to downmix Dolby Atmos into headphones in a perfect way?
Instead they have come up with another technology/profile called “Dolby Atmos for Headphones” that need to come from the media source? And “Dolby Atmos for Headphones” is more for applications and games then movies?
Correct. 
Dolby Atmos for Headphones exists in two versions: Already pre-encoded on a disc e.g. or an on the fly creation by a PC or a console for games that specifically support this.
The only hardware for the specific application you’re looking for that I know of is described in the link I posted above…