[Dksk8]

Big Update.

Audeze reached out to me and offered to RMA my headphones and have me come down to their HQ to see if they could address my issues with Penrose. I met with the CEO, Sankar, for about an hour and a half and we went over every issue and whether it was something they were able to fix. In fact, they flashed my headphones with a new beta firmware that resolved a number of issues which I have outlined below. My big takeaway from the meeting was that Audeze is committed to treating Penrose as a platform to continually improve and not a ship it and ditch it product.

I updated my original reddit thread that sparked off some of the discussion here, and you can check our some of the updates there.

But I also want to point out a few things here as well.

• The wind/warble/interference/whatever-you-want-to-call-it, at low listening volumes has been identified and can be fixed. Apparently it was an issue with the automatic gain control. With the new beta firmware that I am running on the Penrose this sound is completely gone and the headphones sound amazing at all volume levels.
• The noise floor also seems lower now, and its also lower when the voice comes on and tells you which mode the headphones are in and when they "connect" to a source.
• The volume can now be changed using the slider in Windows on PC in the beta firmware. This was originally a design decision, as Audeze wanted to just pipe the line-level source straight to the headphones and amp it there to create a consistent user experience. With the beta firmware you can now adjust it in windows, but Audeze did advise that it is best for battery and sound to leave the line level at 100 in windows.
• The USB connection/range issues I was having must have been an issue with the USB port or the location of the USB port on my machine. We weren't able to replicate the issue on the Audeze test bench, and I had no connection issues while I was listening to my headphones on the Audeze test bench.
• As for "chat/game mix" on PC, the conversation on this point was long (and technical) but ultimately my understanding on this point is that it is a byproduct of a design decision and the chipsets on the market. Audeze wanted to make headphones that can work across multiple platforms, not just PC, so it seems this feature is not possible at this point with the way Penrose was designed to mix audio.
• For battery indicator, I believe for PC that Audeze is looking into adding a GUI indicator somewhere. On IOS, at least, the battery level is reflected over Bluetooth.
• For the mic, make sure you have the microphone rotated the correct way (you can take the pop filter off to make sure, its easily removable). Audeze explained to me that they designed the mic to have lower levels from certain directions (in order to deal with things like keyboard noise). The way I had it rotated was overly muffling my voice. They also explained that there are some limitations inherent in low latency wireless sound technology that make it difficult/impossible to match the quality of a wired mic without compromising listening quality.
• As for the EQ, there is automatic gain control to prevent clipping when you adjust the levels. While it does lower the sound, the headphones now allow you to raise the overall volume after EQ and it does reflect the newly adjusted levels.

Overall, I don't think you would ever see this kind of dedication to improvement and community engagement from a different manufacturer.

Do we know when the first firmware update will be released? It's shows nothing when I click on firmware.

 

[Arkard1]

@Audeze If someone ordered Penrose (not x) today what's best guess on when they would ship? I have a friend interested but he's not one to want to wait a long time.

 

[timeslip]

@Audeze

Any possibility of making a smaller dongle to use with the Nintendo switch in handheld mode?

 

[undbecks85]

@Audeze

Any possibility of making a smaller dongle to use with the Nintendo switch in handheld mode?

There are small usb-c Bluetooth adapters for the Switch like this one. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L9SL7ZT/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fabt1_86vXFbP9THPGH?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

 

[Gatecrasher]

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/audeze-penrose-x-and-penrose.937477/post-16008713

Since the issue is caused by an automatic gain adjustment, it's entirely possible that it gets worse or better.

Thank you, I have reached out to the support team.

 

[Ryan84]

by using a wired connection would there be less latency or the same 16ms that you would get with wireless 2.4?

 

[redbullmaster]

I know they aimed at different users, but how do these compare to the Sony wh-1000xm4 for their sound?

Thanks

 

[brownvim]

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for a new headsets and I would like to know if teh penrose is the one that I should buy or if I have to choose an other.

My use case :
- The headset must be wireless (I use video projector and I'm far from the sources)
- I will mainly use it to play on PS5
- My second usage is watching movie via an nvidia shield (support bluetooth connection and maybe USB but I prefer bluetooth to not have to disconnect the headset from the PS5 everytime
- Third usage call conferences at work on a PC (via usb or bluetooth)

I play very few network game so the mic is not very important, I will only use it to play time to time and to do online meeting at work (so the quality doesn't matter I just want somethings that work), I prefer having good sound to watch movie and play games, when my girlfriends sleep (otherwise I have a focal sound system with a denon amp)

For the moment I have a turtle beach 800 because at those time it was the only one to have 2.4ghz+bluetooth+wired connection, unfortunately since I play on the ps5 sound is crappy (because I use USB and not optics and it seem this headset usb port is only for chatting, there is also crappy sound when using it on the PC via usb but it's ok via bluetooth).
What is fun is that the penrose from the functionality point of view and also physically look a lot like the turtle beach 800. Personally I find that the turtle beach is comfortable for the first few hours but if I wear it a long time (> 3h) it start to pressure on my head. (and my girlfriend feel it totally unconfortable anyway). So I'm bit afraid as the penrose seem to have the same design).

It doesnt' seem to have much headset with all those features, I only found :
- penrose
- steel seeries PRO
- turtle beach 700 gen2

But if you know other headset with bluetooth + 2.4ghz I'm interested.
My budget is between 200/400 $

Which one do you think is the best for me ?

Thanks

You could get an optical extractor and continue using the turtle beach with the PS5 wirelessly. I have done this while I’m waiting for the Penrose to be delivered.

 

[zbrictson]

So angle of the microphone was mentioned, and I do notice it does have a drastic difference from position to position. Few centimeters away from bottom left corner of mouth is what the instructions say. Maybe a photo would help. I know I'm being a little ridiculous but being the guy with the 'bad mic' on discord feels bad man

 

[amoeba1126]

So angle of the microphone was mentioned, and I do notice it does have a drastic difference from position to position. Few centimeters away from bottom left corner of mouth is what the instructions say. Maybe a photo would help. I know I'm being a little ridiculous but being the guy with the 'bad mic' on discord feels bad man

1. Take off the pop filter so you can see where the actual microphone is
2. Orient the microphone so that the silver part points towards your mouth
3. Adjust how far lower and away from your mouth based on how it sounds
4. Make sure the silver part continues to be pointed at your mouth
5. Put pop filter back on and make any further adjustments as needed
6. If it still sounds bad, go into Discord > User Settings > Voice & Video
7. Scroll down to Voice Processing
8. Turn everything off and see how it sounds
9. Turn things that you need back on and see if any drops audio quality

 

[Audeze]

There are small usb-c Bluetooth adapters for the Switch like this one. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L9SL7ZT/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fabt1_86vXFbP9THPGH?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

No. We cannot do that. The design depends on the radio chipset that is used. We have a separate USB bridge chip + a separate Radio chip that precludes the possibility of making a very small dongle.

 

[Audeze]

So angle of the microphone was mentioned, and I do notice it does have a drastic difference from position to position. Few centimeters away from bottom left corner of mouth is what the instructions say. Maybe a photo would help. I know I'm being a little ridiculous but being the guy with the 'bad mic' on discord feels bad man

Have you reached out to Audeze support ?

 

[zbrictson]

1. Take off the pop filter so you can see where the actual microphone is
2. Orient the microphone so that the silver part points towards your mouth
3. Adjust how far lower and away from your mouth based on how it sounds
4. Put pop filter back on and make any further adjustments as needed
5. If it still sounds bad, go into Discord > User Settings > Voice & Video
6. Scroll down to Voice Processing
7. Turn everything off and see how it sounds
8. Turn things that you need back on and see if any drops audio quality

I'll give all this a shot, and that photo is definitely much different than what I had. Could be it.

Have you reached out to Audeze support ?

I'm not used to support teams troubleshooting this sort of stuff, but it sounds like you guys will so I'll reach out if I can't figure it out. Thanks.

Keeping the headset regardless, happy with the sound quality and the range is enough for my place.

 

[Metsuki]

I'll give all this a shot, and that photo is definitely much different than what I had. Could be it.



I'm not used to support teams troubleshooting this sort of stuff, but it sounds like you guys will so I'll reach out if I can't figure it out. Thanks.

Keeping the headset regardless, happy with the sound quality and the range is enough for my place.

If you manage to "fix" it, tell us what you did. I'm curious.

 

[willryan042]

Semi-generic question:

How does the Penrose sound quality compare to plugging in a set of cans to the PS5 controller? In general I'm assuming there's some processing/compression going on when plugging into a controller so no matter how "good" of headphones you're using, I'm wondering how that compares to something like the Penrose.

bumping this question from a few pages back