@John Q Lin What about the HD 800 made you sell it, and make you not want to buy another? Could your reservations be solved with the HD 800S, and an amp that matches up better? What is it about the Beyerdynamic T1 that has you looking around again?
@AlBorland I found that the controller’s headphone output is a significant filter that degrades the potential audio quality of any headphone. Thankfully it uses a wireless radio (2.4GHz?) instead of Bluetooth and an outdated codec for its connection to a PlayStation, however the internal DAC and amp are weak and smear things significantly. The Astro Mixamp isn’t the cutting edge of sound design either, but it should give a noticeable quality improvement over the controller.
The first thing I would recommend is inquiring with Skullcandy about their warranty repair service. That used to be a proud hallmark of theirs, and it can’t hurt to ask them kindly.
Second, if you prefer Windows Sonic over the Dolby Headphone in the Mixamp (which only works properly and to its full potential when receiving a 7.1 Dolby bitstream from the optical input... you tried it that way, right??), then
you can use Sonic with any USB DAC/Amp you want. ...Sorry, just remembered you’re playing on an XBOne, which doesn’t have generic USB audio support unless the peripheral maker pays a substantial tax (price is passed along to the consumer). That makes things a bit harder... if you’re not using a microphone or have a separate solution though, I suppose you could try any DAC/amp that has an optical option, as long as you set the optical output of the XBOne to 2-channel PCM. It’s early days for “solving” audio for the XSX, we just don’t know how it will or won’t work yet, so it’s too soon to know how to set things up with that.
Sennheiser and Beyerdynamic are two examples of companies that take their regular audiophile headphones and add a broadcast quality boom mic. Between the PC37X and (Creative equivalent of the Custom One Pro) H7 Tournament, I use the PC37X for gaming on my iPad, video voiceovers, and internet calls, while my wife likes the H7 for recording audiobooks.