MartinMarty

Have you tried switching among the various sound devices that represent your HMD, including the ones that only appear AFTER starting SteamVR? I don't know whether it is the fault of Vive, Steam, Windows or Nvidia (I have a GTX graphics card) or just timing, but I have always noticed (back from when I started with original Vive) some variation in the name of the audio playback devices that appear in Windows. For example, and don't quote me on these exact names, one time it will say Vive Nvidia Audio and another time it will say Vive Pro HDMI. The thing that has been consistent is that (for Vive Pro) if I don't choose the one that most strongly suggests that it is going through the video card, I will hear a kind of scratchy distorted audio that is even worse than I have become used to with the Vive Pro. Note: I have made the ongoing assertion that the sound of the Vive Pro sucks compared to the Deluxe Audio Strap but my real complaint boils down to it won't play nearly as loud as my Vive+DAS does. The implication of making the HMD dependent on the video card for sound is that we must also be sure our video drivers are up-to-date.

If you're on an original Vive you can try taping over the problematic sensor. I've not heard of this problem on a Pro. You don't mention whether you tried all those other failed remedies at the same time. If I'm interpreting your post correctly, you're saying that you basically swapped out all the hardware including the PC and HMD with known-working units and you still have the problem, but you have three other VR rigs that are similar (not identical) that do not have the problem. If so, that would seem to mean the problem is environmental, i.e. pick up all the hardware and move it to a different "room" and see what happens. p.s. The one item I did not see mentioned is the link box.

wrote: It really is hard to understand why we pay a lot of money for this kit, and the audio quality is so poor on the High Def devcie. I mean, it should be fixable very easily, as applying an equaliser setting to boost bass works well, except that it can't be applied at bootup as the device is not present until SteamVR is running. For me, the quality is fine, it's just the quantity, i.e. VOLUME that is lacking. Regarding the device not being present, what really blows my mind about that is that even in SteamVR itself, I can't set the Audio settings to automatically switch to the correct device because the device comes & goes. So I set it to Nvidia HDMI audio and next time I come it, it's reverted back to "no change". Every time I start SteamVR I have to remember to make sure my playback device is set to the correct device. Not only that but two years ago when I bought my Vive, this problem did not exist and when I bought my Deluxe Audio Strap it made plenty of volume. Sorry to get on a soapbox, but I think it also a cop-out to blame it on Nvidia because even though yes, I concede that they are the ones driving the headphones, we all know that the sound can be boosted via software because of the various EQ and effects utilities that do so, including for example the bass boost in Windows if you feel like monkeying around with that every time the device gets recreated.

wrote: , we've actually been working with Nvidia on this to approach problems people have had on a driver level. The more recent Nvidia drivers contain tweaks that should result in improved audio performance when using the Nvidia driver (as opposed to the Vive multimedia audio usb driver). Most people report having better audio fidelity when using the Nvidia DP driver. It's important to remember that the hardware and software that's driving the HMD can have a tremendous effect on what is actually outputted to the drivers and that not all of what's reported has been reproducible, especially considering that audio is a subjective phenomena and everybody has different preferences towards the balance of the audio. You should be experiencing something similar to the DAS' audio profile. So how do I make sure I am using the correct driver? There seem to be different audio devices present at different times, for example when SteamVR is running versus not. At the time I was actively trying to get this stuff to work I recall minor variations in the names, even when running the exact same hardware and software, for example (I am making this up to illustrate my point) "Vive Multimedia Audio" after one reboot and "Vive Pro Multimedia Audio" after another reboot an hour later, exact same everything. Thanks.

wrote: ... I don't have distorted or tinny audio. The volume is just way too low and there's no bass. Any ETA or update? This is sound quality is totally awful. ... Same here. Exactly. No update. No fix. No help from support. There are some Windows sound equalizers and effects software you can get, at least one is even open source. I had kind of high hopes for a couple days but I wasn't willing to buy the full version. Don't get me wrong - I certainly have enough invested that if another $50 or $100 would fix the sound I would pay it without hesitation, but it wasn't that easy to set up and it was kind of a hassle. Here, check these out: https://windowsfish.com/best-windows-10-equalizer/ It has been a long time but I think I was playing with the one called FXsound and the APO product. Maybe you will find some joy in one of these. If you do, please post a recommendation. I still believe there is hope on the sofware side just because of the difference some of the things like the camera toggle and the Windows bass boost made. In the mean time, I have basically lost interest in the musical VR experiences I used to enjoy, Audioshield, TheWaveVR, thanks to the wimpy sound of the Vive Pro. It is totally unbelievable that, like you said, not one single person could possibly have tested the sound. Had they not made the DAS it would be easier to accept that they didn't have a clue what customers want in a headset, but we know that somebody did understand at one point. How could that person not have raised a red flag during testing?

wrote: Can confirm that putting tape over a specific sensor works. It just baffles me that this still hasn't been fixed yet. Thanks to this thread we've bascially solved the issue for HTC and pin pointed the defect down to a specific sensor that causes issues with tracking when the HMD gets to a certain tempeture. Couldn't they just release a firmware patch that disables that sensor when the HMD gets to hot? Do they really just not care at all? I orignally went with Vive over Oculus since I was under the assumption I'd get a more "premium expereince" due to the higher price point. But, that wasn't the case at all. Issues like this that go unsolved due to HTC just not caring and their horrendous tech support makes me really regret the purchase. Really wish I went with a Rift instead. I've been here basically since day 1 and I can't believe I am defending them, but you are getting a premium experience. Nothing currently available beats the room scale tracking on the Vive, period. It is a superior design and all the sensors in the world won't make the Rift track as well. Most people prefer the Touch controllers but I never had a complaint about the Vive controllers, perhaps because they were the first ones I owned. If you wear glasses there are no two ways about it - Vive wins again. I would love for manufacturers to behave the way I want but when it comes down to it, I really don't care if the fix looks as dopey as a piece of tape on an expensive HMD or if it comes from some yahoo on a support forum instead of the factory representative that should be solving the problem, as long as it is solved. I have enjoyed uninterrupted VR since I taped my HMD and it has been a long time. So long that I replaced it with the Vive Pro, which does not have the same problem. It does however have an audio inferiority problem that seems like it should be a simple software fix but once again, the Vive people do not lift one finger to help their customers. They do not even acknowledge the problem.

wrote: I had mine a total of two weeks and this isue started occuring, the only fix was the tape over the sensor trick (lame). Luckily for my everyone here confirmed to me this is a real issue and HTC confirmed to me they are not really going to do anything about excpet ask you to update drivers, then ask you to pay to send them the headset to "repair" it. It only take 4-5 weeks though *pffft. Anyways i had 30days to return it to the vendor, so again i was lucky. Ironically im looking into to just getting a Pro. So now im off to research if the Pro has any known or unofficially known issues and see if that is worth it. Good luck everyone! In spite of the problem in this thread, I bought the Pro because there is no substitute for the Vive's superior design as far as room-scale tracking is concerned. I can tell you that I have not had this grey-out problem on the Pro. My only complaint has been that the sound is inferior to the original Vive + DAS. That is not to say that the sound sucks, but if you do VR that involves LOUD music and you compare them side-by-side, the Pro is a step backward and that is really unforgivable in my opinion. How can a company introduce a V2 product that is in any way inferior to their V1 product? Just stupid. Who does that? Maybe Windows Vista? "New" Coke? Anyway, I would think the Pro sounds good had I never heard the DAS. In every other way I like my Pro except possibly the displayport cable required to run the new displays makes it impossible to extend the cable but I can get by OK in the room I have. If I was really going to do something that took advantage of the larger play area supported by the new base stations I would hope to have the HMD on wireless anyway.

wrote: I've had this issue for a while and realized today covering that sensor with my hand fixes it. Seems most predominant in the corners...seems like a very bizarre issue, did they ever fix it? Mine was manufactured in October 2016 so its out of warranty, would need to pay for repair but don't want to waste $300 if it won't address it. I have consumer protection on my credit card and can file a claim with them. They never fixed it. I ran with the taped-over sensor for like a year (you can go back in this thread and figure out exactly when I taped it) and just got used to it. It's really not an issue since eveything worked fine. The only possible downside might be if I tried to sell my HMD but who cares, the purpose of this thing was for me to have fun and I have and even though the workaround might look a little funny it is solid. FYI, my HMD was replaced way back when and the new one had the same problem.

... I'm sort of amazed a DIY product was able to make such a significant improvemet over an $800 HMD. No offense to HTC but you guys should look into this. Thanks. That was kind of the point of my post. I don't know if I made my point. I would appreciate a response from HTC/Vive regarding what it is that all these happy modders are not understanding. Why is it that I should not tear my Vive Pro apart tomorrow and do this mod? What would I be losing? I mean no offense also. I am very curious if this was so easy why they didn't build it this way. Thank you.

I keep reading about people swapping the (non-fresnel) lenses from Gear VR into their Vives and Vive Pros and raving about how clear everything is and how it eliminates God rays and reduces screen door effect. But certainly if it was that simple, HTC would have used that type of lenses. Some people admit to some "barrel distortion" which they correct by tweaking some parameter file(s) and sometimes something called pupil swim. I am not at all expert in these subjects. I must admit I am tempted. I would hate to mess up my HMD but truthfully I could probably do the swap successfully. I would like a response from Vive about what the downside to this mod is, as they did not choose these clear lenses for the second time (Vive Pro). If it was all great and no bad, certainly my HMDs would already have this kind of lens. Thank you.

You've put that powered USB hub between the Vive Pro's link box and your computer? I'll try anything.

Thanks, . That gives you a newer version of watchman than I have. Steam does not want to update my headset, so it must not be important. I tried update Steam Client also, but nothing.

The best fix I ever found was the piece of tape. After a while I even stopped thinking about it. I am now on the Vive Pro and praying the grey-out problem does not occur on that unit as soon as the Summer heats up, especially since the Pro also came equipped with disappointing sound and Support is already 100% busy not helping with that problem. At least back when we had this problem, they really did try to help. Enjoy your Vive. Try not to sweat the minor hurdles. I guess that's the price we pay for being at the back of the leading-edge of a technology. I keep buying Vive products in spite of their flaws because the design for tracking / room-scale is superior. BTW, I'm about 5' 8" in Ohio. The grey-out problem didn't occur for me until about this time last year.

wrote: Hi Everyone, Apologies if this has already been said, but have you tried: Go into "Playback Devices" in windows audio settings Select the Vive's audio device (usually there are two - the HDMI device and the USB device - this works for either) Go into the device's properties, then navigate to the "Advanced" tab Change the sample rate from 48000 to 44100 and hit "Apply" Click the test button and it should sound normal Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it this morning and for me it did not improve anything beyond what all the other fixes/tricks have done. I have also been playing with a couple of Windows EQ programs, such a FXSound Enhancer http://www.fxsound.com/webapps/index Another one is open source Equalizer APO https://sourceforge.net/projects/equalizerapo/ There might be some hope there but it gets really confusing between all the various games we're playing and I'm about running out of ambition to work on this problem. If anyone else feels like playing around with those I would love to hear feedback. Having done some testing already, in retrospect I should have undone all fixes and then installed one and only one ehancer program at a time. That way there aren't so many variables to juggle.

Just to clarify, I don't recall ever getting a FW update "notification". The only times I've updated have been in response to specific instruction which caused me to go manually check for an update. If the only thing you're missing is bass, are you aware of the bass boost control in the Windows device properties? It lets you choose frequency and amount of boost.

wrote: I've not read every post in this thread, but I haven't seen this "solution" mentioned: press the headphones against your head! ... That has been discussed in this thread. Even with that, it doesn't make my Pro rock like the DAS. Even with all these "fixes". It's pretty good though. Doesn't matter. My 30 days have long passed. The only thing that still disappoints me is Audioshield becaue it's MY favorite music at pretty much constant high volume. p.s. Me fathead too.

wrote: I would like to confirm that I have also discovered the camera related issue that someone else had posted in this thread. ... I believe there may be something going on when it's switching "audio modes" between the normal one and the one with mics activated during RoomView. Thanks. That's what I think, too.

wrote: I too would really like a response to this. I've read so many say they have updated their HMD firmware, but no one has shown any evidence of that actually being the case. You can check by opening SteamVR, and from the menu choose to generate a System Report. Go to devices in that report and you will find a section listing information for your HMD. There is firmware version and dates show. Mine still shows firmware from Feb (so release version). I have yet to get an update notification and all my devices show as up to date to (Vive Pro, controllers, lighthouses). At this point, I am doubting people have actually updated the firmware ON their HMD. But I too would love to confirm that and see if we are missing one. Would anyone who says they did an update, copy paste their HMD information from their System Report so we can compare? I wish I had done a before and after system report but didn't think of it at the time, so all I have is the "after", like yours, which I posted on page 7 of this thread, and showing the same numbers as yours. I believe it updated and here is why. Two times since installing Vive Pro I have gone to the FW update function in SteamVR and had it say that there was an update available for the HMD. It doesn't say that all the time, so that leads me to believe it is actually comparing something somewhere. After telling it to update, it seemed to perform a typical FW update process, with a countdown, a "do not disturb or risk bricking" message, and at the end of the countdown Windows made the remove and re-add PnP device noises. I can't prove that bits were actually transferred to the HMD and I can't prove that they were any different than the bits that were there before but it certainly seemed like a typical FW update process. I believe it also ended with a success message after which it no longer said there was an update available. As for the version numbers showing Feb., I have to agree with you that is suspicious but let me throw in that I recently had an Nvidia GTX 1080 driver update install for the third time with the the same version number. Another reason I believe in the update was because they told me do A, B, C and it will improve the sound. I did A, B, C and it improved the sound. Later I found that D and E improved it even more, but still, if A was not needed I don't see why they would have made it part of the procedure. That is why I believe the firmware was updated. You mileage and faith may vary.

wrote: 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. 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

wrote: Thing with the camera? Yeah, after the SteamVR update, firmware update(s), etc, turn on the bass boost (and I recommend the Loudness Equalization as well) and go into a game with some sound (even Steam Home with the chirping birds), crank the volume, then do the double-press System Button to turn on the HMD camera view and then double-press again to turn camera view off and see if you get a volume boost. I do. When I turn on the camera, I hear the sound attenuate and the mic comes on and I can hear through the mic. When I turn off the camera and it raises the sound back to the un-attenuated level, it brings it back louder than it was originally, and the bass boost/loudness are still in effect.

wrote: The fact that we're getting no support here other than "feel free to use your own headphones", is just about reason enough for me to not want to give another cent to this company, and return this unit for a refund. For anyone that bought at Gamestop, they may be difficult about you returning it, but if you demonstrate it's a widespread defect, they will allow it. I own a succesful e-commerce business, and would never in a million years consider it an option to ignore my customer base for this long with such a major issue. My customers would be livid. The resolution is definitely a plus, but with the sound about 25% lower than what I set it at on my DAS when the volume is maxed, it definitely cancels out any benefit, and for $800, I better come out in the positive. Anyone have any experience with the Samsung Odyssey? I've read mixed reports about the controller tracking issues. I'm wondering if it might be a replacement since it has the same resolution as the Pro. Odyssey is great as far as the display is concerned. Also very comfortable. But the Vive tracking system is king of the hill. So if all you do is seated VR, Odyssey is a great value. I wouldn't call it "tracking issues". The Vive just has a superior design in that area. Too bad they can't seem to execute at 100%. Seems like they have at least one brilliant engineer, some good support guys, and a moron making decisions. How could they really not foresee that customers would expect performance >= previous model? Did anybody try the thing with the camera, or did I lose everybody with the long post?