@mindbomb Cool, tbh I haven’t owned the series since Battlefield 4 (I also picked up the first game of the Battlefront reboot series... just for the VR mission and space combat), so I’m not as intimately familiar with the sound settings. Still, I have reason to believe that you should still select the “Surround” and the “Large Speakers” option.
Related personal story: with my gaming console, I had lately been using a Creative Sound Blaster Katana for months because it actually decodes Dolby and processes SBX for its headphone jack, but it wasn’t cutting the mustard. I started playing CoD4 Remastered (aka Modern Warfare remastered, for those with no sense of history
), and I KNEW from experience that the surround and tactical cues could be so much more. I dug up my old DSS2, and immediately the sound was much cleaner and crisper (both the Katana and DSS2 were hooked up to a beefy HDV 820 amp to drive all my headphones with ease, ask me my thoughts on double-amping sometime
).
However, I noticed the DSS2’s “Dolby Signal Locked” light was off. I checked my PS4’s settings, and the sound output was correctly set for Optical as the primary output, and Bitstream Dolby as the preferred output... switched it to Linear PCM then back to Dolby Bitstream, still no joy, then I switched it to HDMI as the primary output (Optical still worked) and it asked me to select output formats (I noticed Dolby was unchecked, so I fixed that) and switched it back to Optical + Dolby, and this time the settings stuck and Surround was working great!!!
The Katana might image better with the surround now that I “turned it off and on again” in settings, but I prefer the DSS2’s EQ and positional settings over the Katana’s default options, and like I said it seems like the DSS2’s output is less hazy and more crisp. Until the release of the Smyth Realiser A16 or a Sennheiser processor (DSP) that is surround-compatible with a console, I’ll probably stick to the DSS2. Shame though, sometimes it’s nice to use the Katana speakers as a break from headphones, but overall everything just sounds better with the DSS2 for now.