[candurin]

This was always one of my favorite spatial audio tests. These headphones perform really well on this!

 

[Metsuki]

Personally, I found this one very impressive.

 

[Nicksta]

Has anyone used the Penrose for Call of Duty for competitive gameplay? I know a lot will laugh at that, but its what I play. How are the footsteps? Spatial resolution? Not worried about anything other than being able to pinpoint player movement. I will never listen to music through them or watch movies, or talk on the phone, or create videos, or anything else. Just need to be able to hear sounds with accuracy in location

I am using these via the USB dongle on Win10 for CoD with no issues. Out of the box, the spacialisation seems fine, definitely enabled me to determine where other players were positioned but I would say no better than the Beyer Dynamic DT770Pro's I was using before. What has made a big difference was the application of spatial audio, I tried Razer's (rubbish still), then Dolby Atmos which were better but do nasty things to the low end and treble but have settled on DTS unbound which is the best spatial sound I have used so far, I always play CoD with DTS headphones enabled now. When playing Cold war Nuketown (I skip between MW and CW), you can easily hear and track the sound of the enemy players footsteps running across the room above to snipe from the 1st floor windows, if I could wall hack I reckon I could get some easy kills, the localisation is that good.

Whilst I am here, my 2 cents on the phones. Great quality sound, the Planar Magnetic's really shine when you push the volume just a little, driving the base with a great sense of weight that is not usually experienced on standard drivers (agree the 'Bubbles track' is a great stage to show off the bass and separation of these drivers). I LOVE the ability to simultaneously play content on two PC's, one via bluetooth the other via the dongle, the experience has been seamless like no multi-point BT I have ever tried before. My gripes, really poor range over both BT and the dongle, I was really hoping to get to the kitchen to make a cup of tea during meetings with these but no, I can barely get out of the room before I get the dreaded 'connection' call out. My other headphones, Momentum 2.0's and Sony WH1000's easily get me to the kitchen bench but not quite to the coffee machine and that's just on earlier BT revisions, hopefully this can be resolved via firmware updates. And as per a lot of others, the head clamp is over-judicious IMO, after an hour or so I start to get a sore spot on the top of my head (same on the momentum's but only after a good few hours) some extra padding would have been a good idea, perhaps over time this will settle down or I will get used to it. Maybe Audeze could address this after launch with a button on wrap. I still get a floor level hiss when nothing is playing regardless of connection type or number, was hoping this was going to be fixed in the recent firmware, perhaps next time around. Overall, great cans though.

 

[Androidisgimp]

In typical fashion my Penrose didn’t turn up today via Royal Mail despite them saying they would before 9pm. Let’s hope tomorrow is the day.

edit: tomorrow/today

 

[Naburu2cold]

Anyone know the "ohm" of the penrose?

 

[Gunn3y]

@Audeze or anyone in contact with them, could we please get some more details about the 2.4ghz channel in use by the dongle? Like others i cannot disable 2.4Ghz on my APs due to IoT devices that require it.

In a brief 15 minute test i had 3 sound drop outs with the dongle plugged in away from other ports on my PC and less than a metre from the headphones. I am prepared to work around the headphones channel and change my APs from channel 6, but i'm certainly not going to set them to auto and restart all of them everytime i turn on the headphones. I have ordered a USB extender, but given my PC is on the desk and less than a metre away already, moving the dongle any closer seems kind of overkill.

 

[imac2much]

@Audeze or anyone in contact with them, could we please get some more details about the 2.4ghz channel in use by the dongle? Like others i cannot disable 2.4Ghz on my APs due to IoT devices that require it.

In a brief 15 minute test i had 3 sound drop outs with the dongle plugged in away from other ports on my PC and less than a metre from the headphones. I am prepared to work around the headphones channel and change my APs from channel 6, but i'm certainly not going to set them to auto and restart all of them everytime i turn on the headphones. I have ordered a USB extender, but given my PC is on the desk and less than a metre away already, moving the dongle any closer seems kind of overkill.

Per my correspondence with Audeze support:

The Penrose should choose it's wireless channel automatically based on current wireless traffic, and it's not set at a single channel by default.

I'm in the same boat; if I don't reboot my router, I get several dropouts per hour. If I reboot it once the Penrose is connected, I don't seem to get the issue, though I will test more over the weekend. Major hassle to be sure.

 

[Gunn3y]

Per my correspondence with Audeze support:


I'm in the same boat; if I don't reboot my router, I get several dropouts per hour. If I reboot it once the Penrose is connected, I don't seem to get the issue, though I will test more over the weekend. Major hassle to be sure.

Well if that’s true it is doing a very poor job of it, and we’re going to need a firmware fix or at least an option to set it manually.

EDIT: After disabling Wifi and Bluetooth as I’m not using them right now on my PC it seemed better, so perhaps the USB extension will help get some separation there. Still it’s kind of crazy the amount of interference this headset/dongle seems to be susceptible to compared to other 2.4ghz devices I’ve used.

 

[RoundAboutSally]

@imac2much & @Gunn3y have either of you tried setting your wifi routers channel to be fixed?
If not, please do so and test again. I recommend channels 1, 6 & 11 as they have the least overlap. My routers are always set to channel 11.

Your routers GUI will be different of course, but end up with something like:

 

[Gunn3y]

@imac2much & @Gunn3y have either of you tried setting your wifi routers channel to be fixed?
If not, please do so and test again. I recommend channels 1, 6 & 11 as they have the least overlap. My routers are always set to channel 11.

Thanks, I have my APs set to channel 6 to minimise interference from neighbours already. I could change them to 1 or 11 leaving 6 free for the dongle (since I don’t really care how good the 2.4ghz Wi-Fi is as long as it works) but I’d rather not do that unless I can be sure the dongle is actually going to use it.

 

[RedTail]

If my WiFi router and extender are on 5g, will the Penrose’s wireless connection receive any interference from those devices?

Also, I think it would be cool if @Audeze could create maybe 5 different sound profile templates we could reference to and adjust the EQ. I think actually moving those sliders ourselves in a way that’s gonna optimize the sound would be fun. Every box should come with 5 little EQ cards. That’s what gamers want, gamers want cards and levers to slide.

 

[sidhelps]

If my WiFi router and extender are on 5g, will the Penrose’s wireless connection receive any interference from those devices?

5Ghz should not interfere with Penrose's wireless connection.

 

[Arkard1]

They have wifi analyzer apps to see what's channels are being used by what. Or would the Penrose not show up on these because it's not a "wifi" signal?

 

[WhiteHartMart]

Well it seems Royal Mail have exceeded expectations - my Penrose has arrived at the local depot and is due for delivery today - can't wait to try them out and comment back

**edit - already here, quickly tested for comfort and now charging ready for firmware updating and a day of Music and PS5 testing!

 

[WhiteHartMart]

So, some very initial thoughts (couldn't resist trying them before finishing the charging). Initial tests are on the firmware that came on them and not any updates that are now available:-

1. Clamp for me is fine (used to PC38x which clamp hard anyway). Headband will be a comfort issue as it was with the Mobius for me (Dekoni Nuggets may be needed again)
2. While there is a small amount of background noise, it's not intrusive at all for me and I have not experienced any 'whooshing' yet
3. Tested mic on PS5 (by recording a voice message and playing it back) - was careful to position Mic before testing and thought voice quality was absolutely fine - in fact better than feared - looking forward to trying this again after the update
4. Audio quality - very early days in testing this but a quick try on PS5 and also with some audio tracks (Pink Floyd - Dogs in particular via Bluetooth with an iPhone) shows what sets these aside from typical gaming headsets. I've tried the Pulse 3d and Arctis 9 in recent weeks, but these just absolutely are on another level audio wise. Hard to elaborate at this stage but there's an overall more natural, balanced tone to them than any of the wireless headsets I've tried. Need more time with them to expand on this though.

Thanks to @Oscar-HiFi and all at HFH for turning the delivery of these around so quickly. @Audeze - yes, its been a painful launch, but now they are in hand, its almost like the delays aren't important now - these appear to have delivered what I expected (and was looking for) - really excited to see how software updates improve them further now.