Playstation 5: Thread 03

[Neon Ignition]

Thinking about the game pricing as well:

It seems pretty clear that the current £70 price point is born of the PSN £55-60 Sony charge for PS4 titles. Rising the price allows them to lift the bar so those who shop around for cheap PSN credit etc effectively lose their impact for Sony because either way they're paying more back in now and no-one seems to care about being gouged by Sony's store. However, the PSN prices rarely translate to physical media in the long run so presumably say Uncharted 5 launched down the line for £70 the physical version will in time be sold for around £50-£60, still a mark up but a similar drop to what this gen has seen and third party games will likely nuzzle in around £45-£50 again.

[ZipZap]

Had to brave the wild west of the internet yesterday to try and secure a PS5 with the limited stock appearing at selected retailers coffee in hand i logged in at 7:30 ready for the 8am start. First to go live was John Lewis at 8 o clock ...........site down....... site down...... site down..... out of stock

Oh well roll on 9am three retailers all launching stock at 9am i got in the Game queue at 8, got in the Curry's queue, and opened the Tesco site too 9am rolls around, Game site falls over, Tesco falls over, Currys have had an exploit that let people buy early so now have no stock.

Refresh Refresh Refresh, nothing. Very are launching stock at 11 but at 10:29 i get an alert that stock is live i hit Refresh on their ps5 page and 20 seconds later I'm not even sure if Ive got one it was a blur, but then a few minutes later i get the conformation email thank god

Tesco site came back up mid morning too and let me reserve one for store pick up in December, so put one through on there too just so all my eggs aren't in the same basket. But wow what an ordeal, never again

You did better than me! I saw them in stock on John Lewis at 9am, clicked "add to basket" ....and the site went down. I then focussed on Currys at 11am, browsing kettles etc beforehand to try and keep my connection active so I didn't end up 300,000th in a queue. As soon as 11am came, the site stopped working and then they announced on Twitter that they wouldn't be selling them anyway! At 1pm they came in stock on Amazon. I had one in my basket a few times, but every time I clicked through to the checkout I got an error page and it kicked me back to the homepage. Late last night there appeared to be some stock on Argos, but it was just the digital edition and I want one with the drive.

So this morning I'm still PS4-less. I'm not desparate for one anyway. I'd quite like to play Demon Souls and Astrobot looks interesting. I'm spending more time playing games because there's very little else to do right now, but I have plenty of other things I can play in the meantime!

[Digfox]

Not sure what the Tempest is adding per se

I don't believe it's adding anything at this stage because Sony have said Tempest 3D audio isn't working over HDMI yet (just USB or 3.5mm jack on the Dual Sense controller). So in theory it's just 5.1 audio signal to your speakers.

So it might be worth trying some headphones.

Re: [MENTION=345]Neon Ignition[/MENTION]'s point. The Sony 3D Pulse is just a stereo headset, because the PS5 is doing the '3D' encoding and then sending a stereo signal (with the 3D meta data already) over USB or 3.5mm. So hence atm you can plug in any existing Stereo headphones to experience the effect. People have said it's best on Demon Souls. That said Sony may have designed their 5 HRTF/3D audio profiles with the Pulse 3D headset in mind.

Interestingly they appear to display a '3D swirl' when plugged into PS4 as well. The Platinums just say 'VSS/3D' when doing the same.

Glad to see everyone enjoying their PS5s.

[wakka]

I don't believe it's adding anything at this stage because Sony have said Tempest 3D audio isn't working over HDMI yet (just USB or 3.5mm jack on the Dual Sense controller). So in theory it's just 5.1 audio signal to your speakers.

So it might be worth trying some headphones.

Re: @Neon Ignition's point. The Sony 3D Pulse is just a stereo headset, because the PS5 is doing the '3D' encoding and then sending a stereo signal (with the 3D meta data already) over USB or 3.5mm. So hence atm you can plug in any existing Stereo headphones to experience the effect. People have said it's best on Demon Souls. That said Sony may have designed their 5 HRTF/3D audio profiles with the Pulse 3D headset in mind.

Interestingly they appear to display a '3D swirl' when plugged into PS4 as well. The Platinums just say 'VSS/3D' when doing the same.

Glad to see everyone enjoying their PS5s.

Ah OK, that's interesting, I didn't know that!

TBH I'm not really a headphone user when gaming so I probably won't get to experience it unless they update it for HDMI. I'm satisfied with the output to my amp though.

[Neon Ignition]

I'll try them out on Demon's and see how they go, if they don't feel too different I'll def drop them for a cheaper pair

[wakka]

Thinking about the game pricing as well:

It seems pretty clear that the current £70 price point is born of the PSN £55-60 Sony charge for PS4 titles. Rising the price allows them to lift the bar so those who shop around for cheap PSN credit etc effectively lose their impact for Sony because either way they're paying more back in now and no-one seems to care about being gouged by Sony's store. However, the PSN prices rarely translate to physical media in the long run so presumably say Uncharted 5 launched down the line for £70 the physical version will in time be sold for around £50-£60, still a mark up but a similar drop to what this gen has seen and third party games will likely nuzzle in around £45-£50 again.

Yeah, Demon's Souls has been available for £60 for a little while, so the discounts will be there.

I have to say the price rise in the UK is pretty demented. We went from £50 to £70. In the US they went from 60 dollars to $70.

They do of course have sales tax, but it realistically tops out at about 10%. So their games are $77 - but at £70, ours are $93, and have risen by nearly half!

Deals will always be available, I agree, but it's a sizeable leap.

[Digfox]

Ah OK, that's interesting, I didn't know that!

TBH I'm not really a headphone user when gaming so I probably won't get to experience it unless they update it for HDMI. I'm satisfied with the output to my amp though.

Yea, there was an a bit of noise when Sony did their blog piece on it earlier this year about Tempest 3D audio being limited to headphones to begin with. Found the Sony PS Blog post.

And there's still a bone of contention on places like Resetera where some users clearly prefer Microsoft's solution of being able to extract 5.1/Dolby Atmos etc. via HDMI. That said I think some of that is also the questions marks over Sony lack of surround audio standards for media (i.e. Dolby Atmos etc.).

What I'm not sure on and none of the media/influencers cared to mention is how the PS5 (and Xbox Series X|S) treat older games. Do they still allow for Dolby Digital/DTS to be extracted via HDMI (I'd presume this is the case). Obviously Sony's solution for headphones is stereo so I'd assume unless it's licensed it just outputs a plain 2.0 stereo signal to the headphones, unless Tempest 3D does something with the older games.

With the loss of Optical you'd have to use an extractor or Optical on your TV (neither ideal) to extract the Dolby Digital signal for encoding into Virtual Surround Sound for headphones.

[wakka]

Yea, there was an a bit of noise when Sony did their blog piece on it earlier this year about Tempest 3D audio being limited to headphones to begin with. Found the Sony PS Blog post.

And there's still a bone of contention on places like Resetera where some users clearly prefer Microsoft's solution of being able to extract 5.1/Dolby Atmos etc. via HDMI. That said I think some of that is also the questions marks over Sony lack of surround audio standards for media (i.e. Dolby Atmos etc.).

What I'm not sure on and none of the media/influencers cared to mention is how the PS5 (and Xbox Series X|S) treat older games. Do they still allow for Dolby Digital/DTS to be extracted via HDMI (I'd presume this is the case). Obviously Sony's solution for headphones is stereo so I'd assume unless it's licensed it just outputs a plain 2.0 stereo signal to the headphones, unless Tempest 3D does something with the older games.

With the loss of Optical you'd have to use an extractor or Optical on your TV (neither ideal) to extract the Dolby Digital signal for encoding into Virtual Surround Sound for headphones.

Over HDMI the sound options are the same as on PS4 - multichannel PCM, bitstream Dolby, or bitstream DTS.

I'm no expert but I'd assume if you want to drive multichannel sound into headphones, you'd need a headphone amp/receiver which accepts HDMI. Not sure if such a thing exists.

No idea if Tempest 3D does anything for the stereo output of PS4 titles.

[MarioMark]

This is explaining the issue I'm having with 120hz on my LG CX OLED. It might be worth a look for anyone who has an 120HZ 4K TV and wants to unlock 120hz.

The Maximum bandwidth on the ps5 HDMI port is 32Gbps so you won't get 120Hz to work unless you downgrade the colour (Chroma) to 4:2:2 from 4:4:4 RGB.

[Digfox]

Over HDMI the sound options are the same as on PS4 - multichannel PCM, bitstream Dolby, or bitstream DTS.

I'm no expert but I'd assume if you want to drive multichannel sound into headphones, you'd need a headphone amp/receiver which accepts HDMI. Not sure if such a thing exists.

No idea if Tempest 3D does anything for the stereo output of PS4 titles.

Cool, so PS5 is doing the same as Xbox with options over HDMI.

Re: Headphone DAC/AMPs. No, unfortunately not. I think it's because HDMI has licensing costs. So the likes of Creative, Schiit, Sennheiser etc. all avoid that and use USB/Optical. Stuff that downmixes Dolby Digital into VSS (i.e. SoundblasterX G6) needs Optical. My Samsung UHD TV lags badly when Bitstream/Dolby is selected. And Optical Extractors don't currently support HDMI 2.1 as well as being an absolute lottery (they strip out VRR, HDR etc).

I think my solution moving forwards is to let the consoles do the encoding (Atmos/DTS or Tempest 3D) and then extract a stereo signal to my Fiio K5 Pro DAC/AMP or use the G6 for PS5 over USB.

There is a really good post on the Microsoft forums here that explains it. But in that sense the PS5 and Series S|X are a big step back for headphone audio enthusiasts.

Interestingly the Astro and Steelseries reddits are also unhappy places too at the moment because the USB patches for their licensed mixamps and game DACS (their DAC/AMPs used Optical) are a real step back as well.

Anyway, sorry going off a tangent.

[MartyG]

Laptops Direct have PS5 in stock by the looks, but only if you're prepared to buy in a bundle with a 4K 32" gaming monitor for £1K

https://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/sony-playstation-5-console-1tb-with-31.5-4k-gaming-monitor-bun-eiq-32mcv4kvafshdr-7/version.asp

[Cassius_Smoke]

I downloaded No man's sky and loaded it up. Load times were pretty fast and the increase in framerate made every look super sharp and nice. Very little pop up too. I was really impressed... Then I realised I was still playing the ps4 version.
I have to say though, just the standard PS4 version looked way better. The PS5 version, obviously, looks pretty.

[wakka]

Cool, so PS5 is doing the same as Xbox with options over HDMI.

Re: Headphone DAC/AMPs. No, unfortunately not. I think it's because HDMI has licensing costs. So the likes of Creative, Schiit, Sennheiser etc. all avoid that and use USB/Optical. Stuff that downmixes Dolby Digital into VSS (i.e. SoundblasterX G6) needs Optical. My Samsung UHD TV lags badly when Bitstream/Dolby is selected. And Optical Extractors don't currently support HDMI 2.1 as well as being an absolute lottery (they strip out VRR, HDR etc).

I think my solution moving forwards is to let the consoles do the encoding (Atmos/DTS or Tempest 3D) and then extract a stereo signal to my Fiio K5 Pro DAC/AMP or use the G6 for PS5 over USB.

There is a really good post on the Microsoft forums here that explains it. But in that sense the PS5 and Series S|X are a big step back for headphone audio enthusiasts.

Interestingly the Astro and Steelseries reddits are also unhappy places too at the moment because the USB patches for their licensed mixamps and game DACS (their DAC/AMPs used Optical) are a real step back as well.

Anyway, sorry going off a tangent.

Interesting. At least with Tempest there is some provision, Sony haven't entirely left headphone users out in the cold in terms of surround sound and have aimed to provide a good experience. A hell of a lot of people seem to play primarily wearing headphones/headsets, so it makes sense.

[saif]

Is "Tempest" basically like the VR box in terms of doing the audio work? 3D audio in VR is pretty good and Sony obviously thought it important enough to need a separate box for PSVR (which is *4* years old now!).

[Digfox]

Interesting. At least with Tempest there is some provision, Sony haven't entirely left headphone users out in the cold in terms of surround sound and have aimed to provide a good experience. A hell of a lot of people seem to play primarily wearing headphones/headsets, so it makes sense.

The NPD announced last week in quarter 3, headsets are one of the big growth areas. Which tbh is no surprise with the rise of service/mp games. Hence the big gains for Sony and MS to close open standards like Toslink to increase licensing revenue.

I suspect that we'll need Creative etc. to either start licensing their gear with Sony/MS or headphone DAC/AMPs that use HDMI.