Sony Slashes PS VR2 Output After Pre-Order Numbers Disappoint

[MadMummy76]

I got used to headphones for games in college (99-03) when I was a Counter-Strike addict, and I prefer them for positional audio now.

I've been using stereo studio monitors for over 8 years now, but I still occasionally turn my head at the odd noise coming from weird angles, because it is so realistic and coming from directions that should be logically impossible with only 2 speakers, that I mistake it for real noise.

Normally the sounds doesn't even feel like they are coming from the speakers, but somehow emanating from behind the screen, despite having no center speaker.

 

[Zarathustra]

For those of you that like speakers for games, but also want the headphone experience (to avoid noise for others) give one of Creatives Super X-Fi products a try.

• Creative SFXI Amp
• Sound Blaster X3
• Sound Blaster X4
• etc.

While the speaker experience is not for me, once I properly set up my Sound Blaster X3 I frequently had to take my headphones off and listen, as I couldn't tell if the sound was coming from my speakers or my headphones, and I was worried I was blasting game audio in the house at 3am

Really amazing brain fooling DSP tech they have invented over at Creative.

My X3 was great while it lasted, but the left channel started dying on me over time, so I stopped using it.

 

[Tempest]

I like powered studio monitors in a 2.0 configuration for desktop use. I have tried surround sound setups in the past, but the positional requirements and sensitivity to room acoustics make them too inflexible for my use, and I can never seem to find an ideal spot for a subwoofer without it getting in the way. That and a decent stereo setup can be had without breaking the bank.

My preference for speakers over headphones is general and not restricted to gaming. In terms of gaming, I wonder to what extent genre is a predictor of preference for one over the other.

I don't think the following site is updated anymore, but some of the reviews are probably still relevant, and they're entertaining at the very least:

NO Audiophile Review

noaudiophile.com

 

[Zarathustra]

I like powered studio monitors in a 2.0 configuration for desktop use. I have tried surround sound setups in the past, but the positional requirements and sensitivity to room acoustics make them too inflexible for my use, and I can never seem to find an ideal spot for a subwoofer without it getting in the way. That and a decent stereo setup can be had without breaking the bank.

My preference for speakers over headphones is general and not restricted to gaming. In terms of gaming, I wonder to what extent genre is a predictor of preference for one over the other.

I don't think the following site is updated anymore, but some of the reviews are probably still relevant, and they're entertaining at the very least:

NO Audiophile Review

noaudiophile.com

Yeah, I prefer music on a good 2.0 or 2.1 type setup (but separates, not an all in one speaker in a box setup) and movies are awesome on my proper surround setup but the times I can truly crank it up and enjoy it without bothering others are truly few and far between these days.

Games I still prefer on headphones. At least most games. Something like Sid Meier's Civilization I'll just play on speakers at a low to moderate volume level but GPA titles are 100% in the realm of headphones to me.

As far as subwoofers go, I have never had a problem with them. They can usually go in a corner out of the way. It's best for the acoustics, and bass frequencies are really difficult to tell direction on anyway, so unless your crossover is set too high in the frequency range, that shouldn't be a problem.

I don't mind monitors, but I find I have a little more flexibility with a separate amp, so I tend to go with bookshelf speakers. For my desk/office use I got a really good deal on a set of RBH 41se bookshelves a few years back when they were being discontinued, and I love them. I power them with a Parasound 275v2 power amp, and also have a 12" sealed SVS SB-12NSD sub for a little more bass. Can't remember exactly where I set the crossover, but I think it was ~60hz.

The key is to not set the sub too punchy. Crossover and levels need to be "just present" to sound the best.

I actually use the pre-amp outputs on my Schiit Jotunheim headphone amp as inputs to the Parasound amp and SVS Sub. This means I don't need a separate pre-amp which is convenient and less busy.

As far as surround systems go, if you get a good receiver they have very complicated room correction algorithms where you essentially walk around your room to every seating position with a special little microphone while it plays special calibration sounds in order to help with that. It is not perfect, but the new ones are usually pretty **** good.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

I mentioned earlier how I'm fortunate that at our house, it's usually just my wife and me, for me to have three rooms to game in and in each I actually have slightly different setups. I totally get what @Zarathustra means in regard to not wanting to disturb others but also the fidelity that modern headphone setups can do. I just hate having things on/in my ears.

The C2/5800X3D rig is in the living room on a small glass desk that's offset from the couch at the edge of the room. For that one, I just use the C2's speakers. It's 2.0 (at least according to the manufacturer spec sheet I read) but sounds like surround. It has Dolby Atmos and while the "punch" is minimal the mid-to-high end is pretty awesome and with them aimed directly down at the glass, they provide an unusually effective area effect. I've done some testing and honestly am shocked there is no center or surround speakers. The Bass is lacking but oh well.

In the bedroom is the desk I was showing off last year that I was happy with getting for about $100. It has the 3700X/CRG9 setup. Currently, I'm using a pair of Edifiers that are their budget-mid-tier speakers but honestly sound incredible. They are really clear with a nice full range and maybe the best 2.0 I've personally used. I have a PC soundbar that I used to use before them and I'm considering adding it as a makeshift center but probably won't.

In the cave is where the Sony Z9D 65". The couch is about 6 feet back from it. I also have this (it's also my review in there): https://www.newegg.com/onkyo-ht-s9800thx/p/12K-00DD-001B9?Item=12K-00DD-001B9. This is where I go for definitive Atmos/7.1 gaming. An isolated room that's just the right size to where each game's audio takes over in a totally immersive way. Playing the RE games is downright creepy for those "gotcha" or you can hear something crawling towards you from a direction before you see it. The Witcher 3 is also an amazing experience with all of its ambient sounds. Shadow of The Tomb Raider is also a lot of fun with all the jungle sounds. Presently I don't have a rig in there. I was thinking of setting the 4930K with an EVGA FTW3 3090 Ti but these days so many of the newer games I'm playing are suffering from CPU bottlenecks on it and there are a number of modern features that platform doesn't support. It's still good for older games but most of time is spent playing things from the last few years. The plan is to build a 7000 series rig and move one of the other two in here (probably the 3700X).

 

[MadMummy76]

Yeah, I prefer music on a good 2.0 or 2.1 type setup (but separates, not an all in one speaker in a box setup) and movies are awesome on my proper surround setup but the times I can truly crank it up and enjoy it without bothering others are truly few and far between these days.

Music on a 2.1? That's blasphemy! If you think you need a subwoofer for music what you really need is better speakers

I got a sub for gaming and movies, but even there I had buyers regret as it doesn't really adds to the experience outside of making things rattle in my room when the LFE is overblown. Otherwise the front speakers provide 99.9% of the experience. If I had known that I'll be spending as much on a sub as I spent on my monitors for 0.1% improvement I'd never have bought it.

Games I still prefer on headphones. At least most games. Something like Sid Meier's Civilization I'll just play on speakers at a low to moderate volume level but GPA titles are 100% in the realm of headphones to me.

My issue with headphones is that my head gets too warm in them. And earphones are my personal nemesis, I tried dozens of them, from the cheaper ones to the best brands, and none sat right in my ears, they kept working their way out and falling out all the time. Plus I have a terrible tendency of loosing them, I must have left a bunch all over the world in hotel rooms.

As far as subwoofers go, I have never had a problem with them. They can usually go in a corner out of the way. It's best for the acoustics, and bass frequencies are really difficult to tell direction on anyway, so unless your crossover is set too high in the frequency range, that shouldn't be a problem.

It's an issue with smaller and cheaper speaker systems where the subwoofer basically just serves as the woofer for the tiny satellite speakers.

I don't mind monitors, but I find I have a little more flexibility with a separate amp, so I tend to go with bookshelf speakers. For my desk/office use I got a really good deal on a set of RBH 41se bookshelves a few years back when they were being discontinued, and I love them. I power them with a Parasound 275v2 power amp, and also have a 12" sealed SVS SB-12NSD sub for a little more bass. Can't remember exactly where I set the crossover, but I think it was ~60hz.

What is slightly incovenient with my setup is that I have to turn on and off the sub and the two speakers separately and the switch is on their backs. The volume is set to a fixed level on all, and I use the volume control on my external DAC in daily use.

 

[Zarathustra]

Music on a 2.1? That's blasphemy! If you think you need a subwoofer for music what you really need is better speakers

If you tune it right it blends in seemlessly, but that can admittedly be a pretty challengibg exercise of trial and error.

Even good bookshelves and monitors just don't go down deep enough IMHO. Some towers and big boxy floor standers do, but even most of them are a bit anemic down low.

And I'm not even a big "sub bass" fan.

You have to buy the right subwoofer though. Ported ones tend to be more efficient (more bass per watt) but also tend to be boomy and muddled with all the bass coming out at roughly the same frequency. Sealed ones take more power to produce the same bass, but tend to be faster, more nimble and more musical.

Tuning them right still takes time and effort, but once you get it right it sounds good!

I got a sub for gaming and movies, but even there I had buyers regret as it doesn't really adds to the experience outside of making things rattle in my room when the LFE is overblown. Otherwise the front speakers provide 99.9% of the experience. If I had known that I'll be spending as much on a sub as I spent on my monitors for 0.1% improvement I'd never have bought it.

My issue with headphones is that my head gets too warm in them. And earphones are my personal nemesis, I tried dozens of them, from the cheaper ones to the best brands, and none sat right in my ears, they kept working their way out and falling out all the time. Plus I have a terrible tendency of loosing them, I must have left a bunch all over the world in hotel rooms.

It's an issue with smaller and cheaper speaker systems where the subwoofer basically just serves as the woofer for the tiny satellite speakers.

What is slightly incovenient with my setup is that I have to turn on and off the sub and the two speakers separately and the switch is on their backs. The volume is set to a fixed level on all, and I use the volume control on my external DAC in daily use.

In order to solve this I got a few "smart" power strips. The kind that monitor one outlet for when the power is turned on or off, and turns the other outlets on when it is in use.

Great way to both save power and to turn things on together.

Some higher end equipment also has a 12v trigger, where you connect the stuff with a mono 3.5mm cable, and that serves as a trigger signal to turn the stuff on. Some models also have port sensing, so they turn on when needed. This can be a little iffy though as it is not always perfect and sometimes turns off during quiet scenes in movies, etc.

 

[Zarathustra]

If you tune it right it blends in seemlessly, but that can admittedly be a pretty challengibg exercise of trial and error.

Even good bookshelves and monitors just don't go down deep enough IMHO. Some towers and big boxy floor standers do, but even most of them are a bit anemic down low.

And I'm not even a big "sub bass" fan.

You have to buy the right subwoofer though. Ported ones tend to be more efficient (more bass per watt) but also tend to be boomy and muddled with all the bass coming out at roughly the same frequency. Sealed ones take more power to produce the same bass, but tend to be faster, more nimble and more musical.

Tuning them right still takes time and effort, but once you get it right it sounds good!




In order to solve this I got a few "smart" power strips. The kind that monitor one outlet for when the power is turned on or off, and turns the other outlets on when it is in use.

Great way to both save power and to turn things on together.

Some higher end equipment also has a 12v trigger, where you connect the stuff with a mono 3.5mm cable, and that serves as a trigger signal to turn the stuff on. Some models also have port sensing, so they turn on when needed. This can be a little iffy though as it is not always perfect and sometimes turns off during quiet scenes in movies, etc.

This is th ecurrent setup if anyone is curious:




(I really need to do something about those wires under the desk )

The amp sits on top of an IKEA Lack table under the desk on the right, and the 12" sub is under the table. I was worried this setup would vibrate, but it just doesn't. I'm lucky I guess.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

This is th ecurrent setup if anyone is curious:

I'll be posting some pics of the new 3700X setup this weekend but I'll be putting them in the cases thread since the focus will mostly be on my experience with an NZXT H7 Flow and MSI B550M. I've mostly got things the way I want, sans I need to order a White cable mods 12HVPWR to 4x 8-pin cable but right now they are closed for inventory and don't reopen for another week or so. Other than that, it's pretty much done.

 

[Zarathustra]

Music on a 2.1? That's blasphemy! If you think you need a subwoofer for music what you really need is better speakers

With risk of bringing this thread even more off topic than I already have, I wanted to chime in with a thought that may be even more blasphemous.

I used to be in the camp of "music reproduction equipment needs to be as neutral as possible, you want to hear what the artist intended", but the more time I've spent with different songs, remixes, artists, genres and hardware I have changed my mind on this.

1.) Music is about your enjoyment, not necessarily about the artists intents. If you like something bassy, feel free to turn up the bass. Things don't always have to be neutral.

2.) Artists and their sound engineers don't necessarily know what they are doing. Sometimes the official master just sounds like *** on a neutral reproduction, and needs a little adjustment to be enjoyable.

3.) EQ can be a great way to take equipment that isn't quite the right balance for you and improving it.

4.) Positioning matters as well. Right now I have everything dialed in for my seating position right infront of the screen, but if I am listening from across the room, COMPLETELY different settings are needed for it to sound good. Heck, even changing volume can impact the balance and take something perfectly dialed in and make it sound wrong.

So, I picked a Schiit Lokius EQ recently. I originally got it because I wanted a way to conveniently switch between a "night compatible mode" and "daytime bass" without crawling behind my desk and adjusting the controls on the subwoofer, but what has happened really suprised me, and that is that I have completely embraced the world of EQ.

I was initially worried that it would introduce noise into my analog signal chain, but I wired it with balanced cables, and it sounds completely clean to my ears.

Now my music is all about what sound good to me, and that is going to change from song to song, from volume level to volume level, from seating position to seating position.

Sometimes I'll be listening to music and I'll have a playlist that includes 1980's new wave stuff (notoriously low bass in mix) and 90's industrial stuff (notoriously high bass) and coming one after another they sound either anemic, or way to boomy. EQ helps me enjoy them all. I wish there were less fiddling involved. A preset feature could help that, and yes, I could have gotten that in software, but I am just not happy with any of the software EQ packages out there. Having the knobs has been enjoyable to me.

Though this would be an area where AI could really be useful. Imagine an EQ that analyzes the sound, and adjust the EQ to one of a few presets you set on your own. Something like:

1.) Near field.
2.) Across room
3.) I'm in a bassy mood
4.) Shh, people are sleeping

The AI could real time analyze a song and use ideal settings so you don't have to adjust things back and forth all the time, sort of like what some media players do with volume equalization between tracks.

Here are my current settings for a song I was listening too which I thought was WAY too V-shaped. It was boomy, and even a little sibilant, but the mids were very disappointing, so I fixed it and as a result I enjoyed the song where otherwise probably wouldn't have...

 

[MadMummy76]

With risk of bringing this thread even more off topic than I already have, I wanted to chime in with a thought that may be even more blasphemous.

I used to be in the camp of "music reproduction equipment needs to be as neutral as possible, you want to hear what the artist intended", but the more time I've spent with different songs, remixes, artists, genres and hardware I have changed my mind on this.

1.) Music is about your enjoyment, not necessarily about the artists intents. If you like something bassy, feel free to turn up the bass. Things don't always have to be neutral.

I agree that it should be about enjoyment and you should not be ashamed to turn on an EQ or other effect if you like it better that way. But at the same time I understand the point of the "Neutral" crowd. Because I found the better speakers I have the less I need to manipulate the music to make it sound good. So when you are turning up bass what you are actually doing is compensating for the deficiencies of your equipment or the acoustics of your environment.

2.) Artists and their sound engineers don't necessarily know what they are doing. Sometimes the official master just sounds like *** on a neutral reproduction, and needs a little adjustment to be enjoyable.

sometimes that's the case but it's not universal. In the 90s it was a thing for some labels to master CDs with loudness effects, which is not really fixable after the fact. They did this to make CDs immediately distungishable from casettes and "blow you away".

3.) EQ can be a great way to take equipment that isn't quite the right balance for you and improving it.

I found it depends on my mood as well, sometimes I prefer the untouched sound, while on another day I listen with some EQ turned on.

4.) Positioning matters as well. Right now I have everything dialed in for my seating position right infront of the screen, but if I am listening from across the room, COMPLETELY different settings are needed for it to sound good. Heck, even changing volume can impact the balance and take something perfectly dialed in and make it sound wrong.

Yes, it is best to sit in the focus of the speakers, but my current speakers are so sensitive and loud in turn that they transcend the room, so I don't loose much by moving outside of positional audio.

EQ helps me enjoy them all. I wish there were less fiddling involved. A preset feature could help that, and yes, I could have gotten that in software, but I am just not happy with any of the software EQ packages out there. Having the knobs has been enjoyable to me.

My reciever actually has an "Active EQ" function that automatically adjusts the equalizer based on the input. I don't know how it actually works, as there is literally zero info about it in the manual outside of how to turn it on. But I found that it works really well.

Though this would be an area where AI could really be useful. Imagine an EQ that analyzes the sound, and adjust the EQ to one of a few presets you set on your own. Something like:

1.) Near field.
2.) Across room
3.) I'm in a bassy mood
4.) Shh, people are sleeping

It also has these functions. you can literally enter the distance from each speaker to the listening position. Also has a dedicated bass boost button, and a night mode. Although I admit I never tried the latter. But it's almost as if these old Japanese engineers knew what they were doing.

 

[Tempest]

Sorry to bump this thread with an off-topic (in relation to the original post) comment, but I wanted to ask:

It has the 3700X/CRG9 setup. Currently, I'm using a pair of Edifiers that are their budget-mid-tier speakers but honestly sound incredible. They are really clear with a nice full range and maybe the best 2.0 I've personally used. I have a PC soundbar that I used to use before them and I'm considering adding it as a makeshift center but probably won't.

Would you happen to know offhand the model/name of the Edifier speakers? Are these the ones you have?

Headphones, Speakers | A Passion for Sound -【Edifier USA】

Edifier USA official website, learn about our true wireless earbuds, soft over-ear headphones, classical bookshelf speakers and more.

www.edifier.com

 

[Brian_B]

Sorry to bump this thread with an off-topic (in relation to the original post) comment, but I wanted to ask:

Would you happen to know offhand the model/name of the Edifier speakers? Are these the ones you have?

Headphones, Speakers | A Passion for Sound -【Edifier USA】

Edifier USA official website, learn about our true wireless earbuds, soft over-ear headphones, classical bookshelf speakers and more.

www.edifier.com

I have the R1280DBS (only differeince afaik is that mine are black, not woodgrain) and can say I've been very happy with them. They won't boom the doors off your room, but for "normal" non-earbleeding levels they sound crisp and bright.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Sorry to bump this thread with an off-topic (in relation to the original post) comment, but I wanted to ask:

Would you happen to know offhand the model/name of the Edifier speakers? Are these the ones you have?

http://[URL]https://www.edifier.com/product-r1280db.html

[/URL]

Yep, got 'em from Amazon back in 2020. My only complaint is that they're limited to 24/48 but do sound really nice. I imagine that a high-end 2.0/2.1 Logitech setup is comparable but I did have a focus on listening to music with them as well as gaming. Pretty sure my Samsung S7+ tablet is able to stream 24/48 via BT but can't remember if that's accurate (I've got a program-PowerAmp- that can identify what the receiving BT device is capable of and will stream hi-res audio to a point).