[Twizzleshnizzle]

I’m with you. I’m a total Xbox fanboy but if I had know I’d be so limited to which headsets I can use without the need of an amp/dac and tv connection considering how bad the latency is through bitstream with that type of connection unless you’re using uncompressed stereo or Dolby/DTS, I would definitely get a PS5. I can’t bash on Xbox today tho it apparently runs hitman 3 better than ps5 Twitter turned into a war zone again between Xbox and ps fans lol

I'll never get some fanboy mentality. Mindless devotion no matter the negatives. Sounds almost like some political supporters lol.

 

[mattheturk]

I mean as long as you’re not toxic to others I guess it’s okay.

 

[ElSaigel]

Have used my Penrose for around 16 hours now on the Series X.

People have told me my mic quality is worse now, or that I sound muffled. Sometimes I come through really well though, so it's not all bad and I continue to experiment.

I have exactly the same experience. Usually my friends are having hard time hearing me because my voice is so distant and muffled. This is a bit awkward as I hyped these headphones to them before buying and now I'm the one with crappy headset even tough other guys are running 10 times cheaper headsets. I use sidetone and my own voice sounds really good from my own headphones. So the actual mic is really good quality. But something has gone really bad with software and/or the wireless connection/dongle. I haven't been able to get this mic connection to go from bad to better but it seems to go from good to worse if you happen to connect the headphones to a bluetooth device. For example when I connected to my android phone to adjust the headphones, the mic broadcast quality dropped instantly. But I couldn't get it back to ok by shutting down bluetooth or turning off and on the headset. I've heard that restarting the console could do the trick but haven't been able to confirm that just yet. Maybe just disconnecting the dongle and reconnecting would do the job. That's what I'll try today.

It's really sad that as Audeze seems to be really good at making headphones but they always make some crucial mistakes when designing gaming headsets. For example now they've had to compromise between good mic broadcasting quality and good audio quality because they are using only 2,4 Ghz dongle. Now the wireless bandwidth isn't just up to get the best of both worlds. For example Astro uses 5 Ghz wireless network so they are able to use a lot more bandwidth. Usually 2,4 GHz network is at least stronger than 5 GHz but for some reason the Audeze's wireless is really weak even tough they don't have enough speed in sense of bandwidth (at least it's not laggy). Now people are complaining about connection problems and bad mic quality which both wouldn't be issues if they had used strong and fast enough wireless for good quality audio. So they wasted money on a "broadcast quality" mic which you can only listen by yourself but saved money in the wireless dongle. That's really bad design problem and I bet they will release new set with better wireless in 1 or 2 years.

There is still hope that they could do something about this. At least considering the mic. If they manage to pull of really good software solution, they should be able to fix it so that the mic quality will be ok. Now they are trying to use just certain frequencies and probably pack the data. But the gaming consoles or the games them selves might just pack the data and process the signal once again. So if you ad some software bugs to that it would be amazing if the result would be satisfying. I really hope that they will find a solution for this problem and that the solution will not decrease audio quality.

 

[Maggo13]

I have exactly the same experience. Usually my friends are having hard time hearing me because my voice is so distant and muffled. This is a bit awkward as I hyped these headphones to them before buying and now I'm the one with crappy headset even tough other guys are running 10 times cheaper headsets. I use sidetone and my own voice sounds really good from my own headphones. So the actual mic is really good quality. But something has gone really bad with software and/or the wireless connection/dongle. I haven't been able to get this mic connection to go from bad to better but it seems to go from good to worse if you happen to connect the headphones to a bluetooth device. For example when I connected to my android phone to adjust the headphones, the mic broadcast quality dropped instantly. But I couldn't get it back to ok by shutting down bluetooth or turning off and on the headset. I've heard that restarting the console could do the trick but haven't been able to confirm that just yet. Maybe just disconnecting the dongle and reconnecting would do the job. That's what I'll try today.

It's really sad that as Audeze seems to be really good at making headphones but they always make some crucial mistakes when designing gaming headsets. For example now they've had to compromise between good mic broadcasting quality and good audio quality because they are using only 2,4 Ghz dongle. Now the wireless bandwidth isn't just up to get the best of both worlds. For example Astro uses 5 Ghz wireless network so they are able to use a lot more bandwidth. Usually 2,4 GHz network is at least stronger than 5 GHz but for some reason the Audeze's wireless is really weak even tough they don't have enough speed in sense of bandwidth (at least it's not laggy). Now people are complaining about connection problems and bad mic quality which both wouldn't be issues if they had used strong and fast enough wireless for good quality audio. So they wasted money on a "broadcast quality" mic which you can only listen by yourself but saved money in the wireless dongle. That's really bad design problem and I bet they will release new set with better wireless in 1 or 2 years.

There is still hope that they could do something about this. At least considering the mic. If they manage to pull of really good software solution, they should be able to fix it so that the mic quality will be ok. Now they are trying to use just certain frequencies and probably pack the data. But the gaming consoles or games them selves might just pack the data once again process the signal once again. So if you ad some software bugs to that it would be amazing if the result would be satisfying. I really hope that they will find the solution for this problem and that the solution will not decrease audio quality.

The Astro a50 in gen. 4 only use 2,4 ghz the gen. 3 use 5 ghz.

 

[gdawg3410]

I do not know what happened but the clicking and popping stopped, it literally never happens anymore. I have not changed anything in my settings.(I had already turned off 2.4ghz on my router when the popping/clicking issues started but at the time it did not help at all) And by the way, these are way better than A50's in terms of sound quality. I have the A50's and sometimes I try going back to those only to realize how bad they sound compared to the Penrose. Yes, the Penrose did not exceed my expectations(battery life, charging time, mic monitoring etc) but at least they sound great and I am sure Audeze is going to fix common problems with software updates. They were talking about adding button support for switching between EQ settings. Also, the sidetone is useless in its current state, we should be able to increase the volume of the sidetone, not just on/off.

 

[Fraggleboots]

Super happy with @Audeze customer support. Sent them back with whistling in left ear and something loose in right and they are sending a replacement. I hope they will diagnose issue with left ear and it will either be just a bad component or something fixable with firmware.

 

[Drewbo]

I assume that it's safe to use a Nintendo Switch USB-C wall charger to charge the Penrose?

"The Nintendo Switch AC Adapter supports 7.5 watts (5 volts @ 1.5 amps) and 39 watts (15 volts @ 2.6 amps) charging profiles over its USB Type-C connector."

Just thought I'd double check before frying.

 

[ElSaigel]

No, restarting the console didn't help. Once again the mic quality dropped after just one game of warzone when I walked into another room and the headset lost connection. It did reconnect but after that the mic quality went from ok to bad. I tried restarting everything and adjusting all the mic settings but nothing worked. This is truly mysterious. This is unforgivable flaw for a headset of this price category.

 

[dorme1]

I assume that it's safe to use a Nintendo Switch USB-C wall charger to charge the Penrose?

"The Nintendo Switch AC Adapter supports 7.5 watts (5 volts @ 1.5 amps) and 39 watts (15 volts @ 2.6 amps) charging profiles over its USB Type-C connector."

Just thought I'd double check before frying.

That’s what I’ve been using. No issues so far.

 

[estaud]

I'm overall happy using my Penrose X with my Xbox playing warzone. Here are my wishes...

- The Mic/ChatMix dial function should be reversed, so pushing and turning the dial adjusts mic gain, but turning the dial without pushing should adjust the Chat mix. I adjust the chat mix often. I rarely need to adjust my mic. Another option would be to click the mic/chat button to switch back and forth between volume adjustment vs chat mix. The voice in the headphones could announce which setting is currenlty being adjusted.

- The Chat mix dial should be less granular (I think). It's a lot of rotating to go from all chat to all game.

-The volume dial needs to be more granular. I often find one step up is too loud, but one step down is too quiet.

- It would be great to have audible feedback when the chat mix or mic volume reaches all the way up or all the way down.

 

[Twizzleshnizzle]

Just for info, I quickly tried the Brainwavz Hybrid oval pads on my Penrose X last night. Not good, in fact painful. There's one earpad to tick off the list.

 

[ashikns]

No, restarting the console didn't help. Once again the mic quality dropped after just one game of warzone when I walked into another room and the headset lost connection. It did reconnect but after that the mic quality went from ok to bad. I tried restarting everything and adjusting all the mic settings but nothing worked. This is truly mysterious. This is unforgivable flaw for a headset of this price category.

So your quality dropped once when you connected to your phone, then your quality dropped further worse when your mic disconnected and reconnected?

 

[RyantheGamer]

I know the earcups are not real leather so a leather care kit probably wouldn't make much sense. Are there recommended solutions for not only cleaning but preventing degradation to the earcups? I couldn't find anything on the website other than a recommendation to clean with water.

 

[ElSaigel]

So your quality dropped once when you connected to your phone, then your quality dropped further worse when your mic disconnected and reconnected?

Not quite. Those are two different occasions the quality has dropped. First was the case of bluetooth connection which lead me to believe that maybe the bluetooth connection makes the headset decrease the quality for wireless mic audio. But now the same thing happened when the wireless disconnected and reconnected (didn't have any bluetooth connections available for the headset to connect to). In these both situations the headset reconnected to wireless. But I just can't understand why doesn't it reset to better quality even if I restart the console and headset. It obviously has to reset somehow or otherwise the case would be the one you described and the quality would drop further every time. But that can't be the case.

 

[ashikns]

Not quite. Those are two different occasions the quality has dropped. First was the case of bluetooth connection which lead me to believe that maybe the bluetooth connection makes the headset decrease the quality for wireless mic audio. But now the same thing happened when the wireless disconnected and reconnected (didn't have any bluetooth connections available for the headset to connect to). In these both situations the headset reconnected to wireless. But I just can't understand why doesn't it reset to better quality even if I restart the console and headset. It obviously has to reset somehow or otherwise the case would be the one you described and the quality would drop further every time. But that can't be the case.

Yes I was wondering how did your mic reset to good quality since you said restarting didn't help. When did you notice the quality was back to good?