Vive Pro audio quality

[Angelus]

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@paulashevillewrote:

Well I seemed to have somehow fixed the volume issue. I'm guessing what did it was turning on Loudness Equalization in the Windows Playback settings for the device. My guess is that this is overriding some volume attenuation occuring at the system level with the drivers for the device. I can't speak to the quality, but it does seem to be about the same as my DAS headphones now.

It's really sad that I've managed to figure out a possible fix just from tinkering, but that the engineers from HTC haven't managed to figure out recommended solutions yet.

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Help This Company... Hell The Customers...  IPD knob on my Pro headset spins pretty freely...

[MartinMarty]

@paulasheville Just curious, did you try turning the camera on & off? I posted about it Friday and Saturday along with the Loudness Equalization and I am just curious if it works for other people, too.

[paulasheville]

Whatever I did to fix it is not working again today after restarting Steam and SteamVR. It's obviously driver or software related, but I have no idea what I actually did, because loudness equalization is not working to fix it today.

[paulasheville]

OK I fixed it again. It was Loudness Equalization. It showed as enabled when I went into properties via the selection of (Speakers - Vive Pro  Multimedia Audio), which was what I believed the correct setting to be. However, when I turned camera on and off as suggested above, it selected a different playback device which was (Vive Pro - Nvidia High Definition Audio). I went into the settings for this and selected Loudness Equalization and the volume went up dramatically. In fact I had to turn it down not to hurt my ears (as it should be with any good headphones).  

Are you listening HTC techs? The customers are having to try to fix yours issues because you don't seem to want to bother or do even the most rudimentary customer support.

Here's an idea. . . have some support people go work at Disney or another company with and decent sense of support for a while and learn the basics. Customer Service and PR 101....Don't just ignore a big issue.

[MartinMarty]

That's interesting. I suspect you had to manually select device because of which one is designated Default. I have a regular set of speakers designated Default Device (for Playback). I have Vive Pro Multimedia as Default Communications device. Mine remembers the Loudness Equalization setting (and Bass Boost) but I have to do the camera on/off trick every time I restart SteamVR.

In SteamVR Settings, I have "When SteamVR is Active" set playback device to Vive Pro Multimedia and when SteamVR is exited set playback device to regular speakers.

I get a noticeable increase in volume from doing the camera on/off trick.

[Angelus]

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@VibrantNebulawrote:

Quick update: We are still investing reports of poor audio quality and are thankful to everybody who was able to provide system logs. I will reach out to users who posted in this thread over the weekend on a 1:1 basis in case they would also like to submit System Reports for inspection - they are very helpful in determining software and hardware compatibilities that require further attention. The update published to the beta branch is still under evaluation and may not be representative of whichever update ultimately is pushed to the public branch. It is not an EQ based patch. 

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HTC by far the worst customer support experience I have ever had in my life...

I would prefer a full refund...

[Angelus]

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@Synthesiswrote:

Valve has released their audio quality update into the release branch for SteamVR

Thank you,

-John C

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From Reddit

Robert9674:

This was the update they released in steamVR beta. They just released it to the official steamVR build. It didn’t fix the sound in beta so I’m not sure why they are releasing it to the official build. I guess they want to make it seem they are fixing something.

[twack3r]

Please do check if you are able to use the built-in volume buttons when using the HDMI audio device. AFAIK those buttons only function when selecting the Multimedia audio device.

[Badgerslayer7]

Having just got my vive Pro and I have only tried out 2 games using it. With the updated firmware and steam vr beta. The 1st one was the blu. The sound was terrible and at max volume the headset makes a crackling sound. The other was space pirate trainer and the sound was night and day different. Loud plenty of bass no crackling at all. I will try some other games tonight.

[CGar]

Just came here to chime in and say that I'm another unhappy customer that can confirm that the audio quality is pretty terrible on the Vive Pro (post firmware update and latest SteamVR beta).

I'm pretty sure it is a hardware design flaw because when I push hard on ear cups into my head and get them closer to my ears, the sound is significantly better and much of the missing bass is restored.

The best hack/workaround right now is to set your Audio settings to the Vive Multimedia output (not HDMI) and enable the Bass Boost enhancement.  It still sounds pretty bad.... just less bad.

Either HTC needs to do a recall on the headset or they need to provide us with some replacement ear pads or something that allow the speakers to get closer to our ears.

[MartinMarty]

@CGar Did you try turning the camera on/off? I am curious if this works for everybody. It pushes me toward the side of software problem/solution.

[andino]

Camera on/off does not fix the lack of bass. 

[MartinMarty]

Same here. For me, Bass Boost helped the lack of bass but at a cost of even more volume. To get that volume back required Loudness Equalization plus camera on/off.

[biopharmacist]

The trick "works", but with the loudness equalization, the volume drops on louder noises, the ones that usually have bass. So ya, we're still far from a real solution.

What's truly ironic is listening to the Only One King song from the announcement trailer. The song sounds great with almost any other speakers or headphones, but then it sounds like crap on the product it was used for advertisement. Did I say ironic, I meant sad.

[MartinMarty]

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@biopharmacistwrote:
The trick "works", but with the loudness equalization, the volume drops on louder noises, the ones that usually have bass. So ya, we're still far from a real solution.

What's truly ironic is listening to the Only One King song from the announcement trailer. The song sounds great with almost any other speakers or headphones, but then it sounds like crap on the product it was used for advertisement. Did I say ironic, I meant sad.

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Upon receiving the Vive Pro, it took me virtually no testing time to discover this problem. I think the first thing I tried was theBlu, and I did not notice the audio deficiency but I definitely noticed how much more I could see. Next was probably AudioShield and it took about three seconds of the first song to  decide I must have set something up wrong because their advertising said Vive Pro would sound great. I don't think it was unreasonable to expect it to sound at least as good as DAS. 

Now all this stuff we are doing is a bandaid but as you said, not a "real solution". Don't you think it all indicates that a software fix is possible? How hard can it be to load up the right values in some I/O ports or whatever to increase the gain on the amp? Unless it actually can't do it. We have no way of knowing what the internal amp and earpieces are actually capable of since obviously they were selected, assembled and shipped without testing - the first tester would have discovered that something was lacking.

Has anyone heard of anyone who is satisfied with the Vive Pro audio? If you didn't do any VR that required high volume, could you possibly think the Pro was OK? Like, if I only did theBlu and Google Earth and some of the lame titles on Vive Subscription, maybe I wouldn't notice, but even in games you want the shooting and roaring monsters to ROAR.

Does anybody work somewhere that bought multiple Vive Pros and do they all sound the same?