Supersonic Stork

5.1 and 7.1 systems aren’t all that widespread, even in the music industry. Surround kinda sits in the same place vr does for me. It’s immensely cool, but it’ll never become standard due to hassle and lack of support.

Most of the recent innovation in sound has been trickled down from the music and film industries. Just a general increase in the capabilities of soft synths and a better understanding of foley, alongside dedicated in house recording studios have raised the bar of audio.

To be honest I agree with you that sound is overlooked, sound engineers truly are unsung heroes. I mean even when people point out the sound in a game, it’s usually directed at the composer.

I got curious myself and agreed, so I went looking.

A lot of sources specified that it was part of a technical requirements checklist, and…

Yeap. It doesn’t explicitly require a “press any key” screen, but it gives a more pleasant screen to look at while you select a user. People online also say it’s used to detect which controller is in use.

If you add a feature like this to a game, it becomes harder to maintain if there are discrepancies between builds. So presumably it’s usually just left in rather than removed.

I’ve been playing through it with a few of my pf2e group.

Larian did such an amazing job with this, and I am enjoying it, but I find myself wishing this game had the action economy from Div : OS2 or pf2e.

That said, I’m glad to see that they’ve continued the trend of their prior crpgs, and made something approaching the flexibility of a GM behind a screen.

I never got it until I got Skyrim VR

So many soothing moments beneath an aurora, in a bustling tavern or just walking along a path

I was tentatively excited to get it before I saw the sheer amount of money grubbing. The existence of Last Epoch, Path of Exile and Grim Dawn made it a lot easier for me.

There seems to be a limit to how large a studio/publisher can get before it keels over into pure and utterly unashamed greed. Shareholders gotta make money I guess.

Huh, strange. Everywhere I looked online indicated that this pair of headphones has a single TRRS 3.5mm jack that comes with a usb adapter.

TRS (tip-ring-sleeve) and TRRS (tip-ring-ring-sleeve) indicates the number of channels on the 3.5mm jack. TRS is usually dual channel balanced (one channel for ground) whereas TRRS includes an additional channel for a mic.

As for all the other cable stuff, everything you’ve told me means that the troubleshooting for jacks and cables can stop there (I’m also assuming the echo happens in both ears and not just one). If we can’t replace the cable, we can’t tell if the problem is the cable or the headphones. I doubt the USB adapter will help either, unless JBL has some weird thing going on with that.

The echo being affected by your headphones volume control makes me think the internal wiring is miswired somewhere along the signal chain. You should still be able to use the headphones without the mic, so that’s what I’d do.

I’m planning, in the far future, to buy a cheap DAC to plug-in a headphone, a microphone and an electric guitar so I can use all of them on the computer at the same time that I can use the headphones as monitors for the microphone and the guitar. Is this possible?

You’re looking for an Audio Interface, not a DAC (although audio interfaces have DACs in them). There’s a lot of options out there, and you’ll have to assess the options based on your budget and use case.

I do not own this pair of headphones, nor do I use 2-in-1 headphones. But since no one has responded, I’ll just throw whatever I can think of at you and see what sticks.

Low Likelihood Solutions

I am listing these to try and give answers. None of these should work, but they’re easy to try and don’t cost anything

• Are you connected via jack? Try connecting via USB instead. The jack has a TRRS connector and PCs usually only have TRS. This shouldn’t cause any problems normally, but idk what JBL or your PC is doing
• Are you using Stereo Mix on your control panel > sound settings? Switch over to the actual mic and disable the Stereo Mix. That could be what’s causing your audio doubling

Medium Likelihood Solutions

These might work

• Have you tried this without EQ APO installed? Try fully uninstalling it and ensuring sound devices are set correctly. EQ APO could for whatever reason be mixing your output and input. It’s been a while since I’ve used EQ APO, but I only used it for audio output
• Is the mic not disabling correctly and picking up audio from the headphones’ speakers? Try lowering audio output to a minimum and seeing if that changes the volume of your echo. Ask another person to help test
• EDIT If possible, can you try a different cable? The cable could just be faulty. Wherever you got it from might have a spare to try

This requires additional spending to confirm

• Is the USB or are drivers the problem? Get a TRRS splitter (3.5mm, 1 female to 2 male), and split the mic audio from the headphone audio

I hope one of these work, because…

The Nuclear Option

Get new headphones or claim warranty on them (if you have it). My cursory googling showed that this problem has cropped up with a reddit user, and they ended up buying new headphones. If you do end up buying new headphones, I highly recommend buying a solid pair of wired headphones and a mic separately. It’ll be more cables, but much easier to swap out if things go wrong, and a good pair of headphones will last you a good 5+ years.

Best of luck, and let me know how it goes!

It’s great. And a lot of work goes into tweaking that range of frequencies that goes unnoticed, unless the mix engineer screws up.

Imo the best thing you get from better headphones is clarity. Hearing intricately crafted neuro timbres just inspires me.