PlayStation Reveals New Official Headphones and Earbuds, Pulse Elite and Pulse Explore

Wonder if Sony is going to announce the new ps5 next, might not be a showcase after all

What I hope for here is: the next PS5's finally having ruddy bluetooth audio support! They need to phase out that flipping dongle

Honest question:

With the 3.5mm outputs available in controllers these days (which are already wireless), why spend the extra price on wireless gaming headphones?! It just ends up being yet another thing to charge on top of the controller.

So if I read this correctly I can use the buds on my cellphone without any extra devices besides turning on the Bluetooth right?

Very interested in those headphones. Although I hope the build quality on the cups is a bit higher quality. I'm on my 3rd pair with my pulse.

Might get the Pulse Elite and the Portal.

I really like my PS5, but one of the things that I can’t understand is this gatekeeping with proprietary accessories. I just got the AirPod Pros for 200 bucks, I’m not about to spend another 200 on buds I can only use on the PlayStation. I also have tons of Bluetooth speakers that I’m unable to connect natively to the PS5.

Bought Street Fighter 6 and looked online for a controller with a better d-pad. Nothing much under $150. I’d really like to use one of the three 8bitdo controllers I already bought, but they won’t work even with a Bluetooth dongle.

USB dongle required? Why can everything but a PlayStation link wirelessly with headphones/earphones

Just get Sony headphones that don’t have the PS tax applied.

@Quintumply oh no. I still hope that the headphones having Bluetooth audio that maybe they will add it to consoles in the future too. But at least having the option to use them with your phone too is a step forward.

Never in my life have I ever seen a professional gamer, aka someone who gets paid to game as a job, use earbuds. That should be all you need to know.

@LifeGirl yes and most of them use garbage generic 'gaming chairs' when ergonomic office chairs are almost always more comfortable. Yawn

Looking for a good set of earbuds for PC gaming — maybe the Pulse, perhaps🤔

And don't you need these or at least that dongle to use wireless headphones with that new controller with a screen thingy? As that seemingly doesn't have Bluetooth

@GamingFan4Lyf. Are you being serious? You don’t have to be an audiophile to tell the difference between the twee sound coming out of the controller compared to the 3D spatial audio of the Pulse headset. Tons of examples. In shooters, you are able to discern the direction of incoming fire. Horror games especially are enhanced and made creepier by the overall sound design. Audio truly adds to the overall immersion of the gaming experience. But surely you know this.

@Stevemalkpus I can tell the direction just fine with my wired Plantronics RIG headphones that I plug into the controller and they didn't cost more than $35.

I also use them in my laptop, Switch, and Xbox. 🤷‍♂️

I didn't mean the audio from the controller speaker....I'll edit my comment to be more clear.

@Americansamurai1 your the first person I've seen here and everywhere say the "next" PS5.

All the talk say and some media keep saying a PS5 Slim.

Non of the rumours what came out ever said it was a slim version, not one.

Literally just seen a YouTube video about the leaked video of the new ps5 and they are going on about it being ps5 slim and actually saying it doesn't look that small.

Well no one ever said it was a slim.

Its just going to be a streamlined 1 sku PS5 so Sony make more money and not making 2 different SKUs for basically the same console.

The reality is news sites and you tubers keep using rumours as actual news.

Playstation haven't even said anything officially yet.

I expect if it isn't coming this year.

Then it will be end of 2024 along side the ps5 pro version.

@Bez87 yeah don't think they can get it much slimmer, it's not like a PS2, there's so much technology in it not to mention they want to keep it cooled and quiet. I still think they will release it this year at $400 with the disk drive being anywhere from 50 to 99.99. Black Friday is going to be very interesting because I see them doing a good bundle this year to drive sales, I feel like psvr2 will also see a black Friday discount to probably 400 with horizon included.

Can I use the buds with PSVR2?

@Americansamurai1 they need to let publishers let go of the PS4 first. Example being Little Nightmares 3, 2024 release date PS4 and PS5.

However I do suspect the new PS5 will have the backwards compatibility removed.....

@GamingFan4Lyf
Honest answer: so you can set your controller down on the coffee table to snack during the cutscene without accidentally yanking your headphones out of your ears.

@TheCotters1985 sadly I don't think PS4 development will end anytime soon, massive player base, but just hope 1st party is PS5 only. I don't think backwards capability will end due to a few reasons, psplus, and psn. Sony is still making a lot of money on PS4 game sales and don't seem them cutting that off.

@koverby I never had that problem. I mean, my cord is 4 ft (1.2 meters) long - which is plenty of length.

@GamingFan4Lyf
Dang. Wish I had a 4-foot cord… 😔

@Loamy I feel this! I ended up just glueing the things back together! On my 4th pair! I love the quality etc but the build quality of them is terrible!

What’s the difference between the elite pulse and the pulse 3D I have?

I have the Pulse 3d headset. Many only use them when playing on the PSVR2. My pet peeve is I can't mute the mic through the controller. But I can with my wired HyperX cloud alpha's. So, I wonder if you will be able to mute the mic with these???

I wonder how good the earbuds are. It would be great to use these for both gaming and personal use.

I just read the PS Blog. I'm confused. Can I use PS Explore with my phone for personal use? The blog is confusing.

@Stevemalkpus Are you being serious?

You do realize that there is literally nothing special or different about Sony's Pulse headphones compared to a regular pair of cans, right? They're just stereo headphones, albeit wireless and proprietary to the PS5. You can experience Tempest 3D audio just the same using a pair of headphones wired to your controller. Exactly the same. 3D audio (through headphones) is still stereo-based.

"3D Audio" is a gimmick name to make people think you need special equipment to experience it. You don't. It's literally still just plain old 2-channel sound when listening through headphones (pretty much any headphones), just using psychoacoustic tricks to make it seem like it's "3D" (i.e., sounds like surround sound through headphones).

But surely you know this.

@gonzilla. The poster’s original comment made it seem like he was talking about the audio coming from the controller itself, not using the jack on the controller for a wired headset. I was just using the Pulse as an example of any headset being superior to the sound from the controller. The post has since been edited to clarify a wired headset plugged into the controller.

@gonzilla I’m gonna need you to calm down

@gonzilla. Off topic, how do you get the italic typeface in your post?

@Stevemalkpus There's a couple ways

Easiest is wrapping the text you want to italicize with underscores (won't let me type it without it converting automatically), so something like (underscore)this is italic(underscore). You can do the same for bold using asterisks, like (asterisk)this is bold(asterisk).

When you edit the message, it looks like it converts it to other tags, but haven't checked what all those are. For italic it converts it to [em] and [/em] and for bold it's [strong] and [/strong]. There's probably more!

@gonzilla. Thank you. I really appreciate that.

@NotTelevision u do know the playstation buds can also be linked to your other devices so not playstation only 😎

@WaveBoy u can connect them to other devices like mobile and pc so can't see why wouldn't with the psvr2

Planar magnetic headphones and buds for that price? With lossless support?! I mean, I do own a couple of Audeze headsets for gaming, but I think of getting those too just because It's too good to be true 😊

@Styledvinny79 The difference is sound quality. Planar magnetic drives make sound very detailed, as they do not suffer from the distortion inherent to any dynamic drives.

@Ravix yes they do!

@GamingFan4Lyf Personally, I find it very annoying to have a cord dangling down from my head while I play games. I tried using a wired headset I already had when I first got my PS5, but I ended up getting the Pulse 3D headset soon after, and it was worth the extra expense to me.

@Americansamurai1 I've been thinking the same but I have the plan b of next year.

But my theory was get spiderman out the way with its special edition console for like a last hooray and then have a Christmas deal of the new sku at maybe a little cheaper than the discless version and then the add on drive for around the price you say.

At the moment its discless at 100 less so makes sense.

I'm hoping for a good psvr 2 discount. I'm up for it just money issues prevented me from paying for it and considering playstations lackluster support its a hard one.

Why isnt anyone actually asking the hard questions to Sony. I always just hear the your doing so great and all that.

Why does no journalist say playstation why throw out a great piece of tech and not actually support it at all, literally why are you so half hearted with everything apart from the main console

@Bez87 I agree these journalists who get a chance to speak with Jim and Co never seem to ask them straight forward questions on what's going on I know they probably agree on what to talk about in advance, but they have 19 studios with some studios having multiple teams and we hardly know anything

How is it lossless? Wireless audio isn’t lossless.

@11001100110zero
"Lossless compression is a class of data compression that allows the original data to be perfectly reconstructed from the compressed data with no loss of information."

Now you know and knowing is half the battle.

I'm really excited for Sony to lean into their audio roots more! Here's hoping to the PlayStation Explore earbuds rival Sony's XM5s in quality.

@TheCollector316 See it’s still not clicking lol…Lossless audio is “uncompressed” audio. How can uncompressed lossless audio, then be compressed, but not lossy. I’m not knocking Sony, but as an Audiophile, it’s not made clear enough.

Lossless audio is completely untouched. Compression removes data and information of the file, in order to compress is. Most uncompressed Flac files are 40mb for a 3 minute song. Wav files are even larger. MP3’s are the smallest at just 3-4mb. They’ve been reduced to such a small scale by having the file be gutted of large bits of audio data.

I’m sure Sony figured something neat out, maybe their own MQA style work around.

But most actual full range headphones with low OHMS are required to be wired, and typically need an external amp to properly drive them. There really aren’t any wireless headphones that allow uncompressed audio, I can’t think of any from Focal or seinheiser for instance.

So yeah it’s still not clear enough in my book why they would say it’s uncompressed. Unless they have a new codec their not going to license out to anyone, and keep said breakthrough to themselves.

@TheCollector316 I just found an article from 2021, so pretty dang recent. I guess Qualcomms own Aptx codec is now considered lossless. So yeah that’s neat. Could Sony be using Aptx and licensing it from Qualcomm maybe?

From the article. “Qualcomm's aptX technology is different because it is based on ADPCM (Advanced Pulse Code Modulation) techniques and is a non-destructive codec. “

Further reading suggests that even so, it’s barely above 16-bit CD quality, Apple Music lossless is 24-bit with a DAC.

Here’s the article too.

https://www.howtogeek.com/752991/bluetooth-lossless-audio-is-finally-here/

@GamingFan4Lyf Agree here. You could tell the direction of incoming fire playing counter strike on a pc with airplane earbuds 20 years ago.

@berte 3-D audio is nothing new - dating all the way back to 1881 when the first binaural recording was made.

Obviously, today, we don't need to solely rely on 2 microphones attached to a dummy head as audio processors handle all the math to simulate the same result as the binaural recording methods.

Where technology has changed is just in the sheer amount of sounds these audio processors can handle.

The Xbox Series X|S audio processing chip can do more single-precision floating-point math than all 8 cores of the Xbox One X (over 300 sounds).

Mark Cerny has only ever said "hundreds" with Tempest without giving an exact number - I am sure pretty comparable or maybe even better than Microsoft's.

Before Sound Blaster went obsolete, I think 128 "voices" was the max it could produce.

Heck, I think have 16 "voices" back in the day was something to behold (I think that was Duke Nukem 3D's max voice number). The original Doom I think capped at 8 "voices".

We've come a long way with audio. It's a shame it's the least appreciated side of immersion.

If they could connect to the PS5 with BT, the Pulse Explore would be a day 1 purchase for me. But as they persist with the damn dongle it's a hard pass for me.

It's 2023, how can it still need a dongle to work?!