Is this normal? I’ve tried my old apple earpods and Meze 99 classics, I can hear the same hissing noise on both. Changing volume levels does not affect the noise levels. I’ve looked at other posts on the same topic but couldn’t find if this is normal or not.

I already have a dead subpixel that I was overlooking, maybe this in combination now warrants a RMA?

New LE OLED version, received a few days ago.

  • ThatLastGenGamer@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I got my 512GB unit yesterday and immediately noticed the problem. The ground noise is unnacceptably high and varies between menus, in-game, according to the chosen power options, etc.

    I just ran a few comparative tests this morning using different headphones to see how bad it is:

    - Hyperx Cloud II: the ground noise is very noticeable at all times. It’s even more prevalent in the Steam Library than in-game but it never goes away.

    - Moondrop Quarks (IEM): the most noticeable of all, given the higher sensitivity. Unusable for anyone who cares even a little bit about clean audio.

    - Sennheiser HD 598SR: my oldest and most-used pair, usually slightly sensitive. The SD’s ground noise is a little less intense VS the previous two but still very noticeable and not acceptable. Once again, menus somehow show it the worst.

    - Sennheiser HD 560S: slightly less noticeable than with the 598. During gameplay in Prey (2017) I can almost forget about it, although it’s still there. Becomes noticeable yet again in menus.

    - Beyerdynamic DT-770 Pro 250ohm: the only pair which completely hides the issue for me. Not noticeable in-game or in menus. It’s a studio pair with higher impedance and lower sensitivity but it is not representative of a typical consumer-oriented product that most people will be using to play portably.

    I am somewhat hopeful that this issue can be mitigated through software. Maybe it’s a voltage control issue with the internal DAC or something of the sort. My LG G7 ThinQ smartphone had a dedicated Quad-DAC with purpose-built “audiophile” internals and it read some audio inputs completely wrong, creating lots of distortion with some headphones and none with others.

    I need to know if they plan to address the problem. I am not about to keep an almost 600€ portable device which can’t play well with portable headphones and IEMs.

    One final consideration is that I suspect they have the pre-amping on the internal DAC/ Amp way too high. The fact that my Beyerdynamic basically run perfectly and without any lack of volume points to the source gain being way too high for regular, sensitive headphones and IEMs. I really, really wouldn’t want to have to send this back.

    • dhawal1@alien.topOPBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Thanks for the reply!

      The issue isn’t there when using the USB port for audio and it also enables hi-res audio so I’ve decided to live with it. However, I think steam support could really use this info and suggest you send them this. I’m going to link this and other posts to them as well.

      Here’s a couple of other posts I mentioned:

      https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/s/4O8RNAtBhH

      https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/s/pH5tNQnlRb

      Hopefully it in fact is a software issue that can be ironed out. I don’t want to ask for replacement and play the device lottery for a perfect device. Fortunately, everything other than this and a dead subpixel works perfectly well on mine.