2023 PS5 DAC Roundup and Audio Guide - Wired Audio Bliss for ANY Budget

[Music] foreign Tech and in today's video I'm going to talk about Dax and amps for your PlayStation 5. so the goal of this is to help you understand what you can get out there what gives you the best sound quality what's worth it or not and hopefully by the end I helped make your purchasing decision a little bit easier now there's a lot to cover I have a lot to say so this video is going to be a little bit on the longer side and I will have chapters below to help in case you only care about a particular product or segment however during the video and during the discussion of other products I hope to share some useful information so if you can and you have the time I suggest watching this from start to finish because it's really the best way to understand uh what to get I will have purchase links in the description below so if there's something here that you like that you want to buy it does help support the channel but also helps you find the product to learn more about it as always just purchase it wherever you feel comfortable now if you find this video helpful don't forget to like And subscribe I'd love to see it the next video and with that being said let's dive in so what is a DAC now the literal translation is digital to analog converter what that means in this case is taking a digital signal from the PS5 you know through the USB connection and turning it into an analog signal which is basically the sound waves that's powering your headset or headphone now a good DAC will sound good it won't have hiss or static or hum and other random issues and it should have good clean power I'm simplifying this greatly because I can't focus too much on the technical side here the video will get too long but ultimately a DAC is an important piece to your audio and if the DAC or unit is designed poorly you're going to suffer from that so I will mention if there's some that aren't as good here from an audio quality performance but I also want to talk about features I do want to note just so I don't forget Tempest 3D audio the 3D audio feature built into the PS5 for rendering games in a virtual space that's all compatible with everything I discuss here Tempest 3D audio works with everything because the Sony PS5 is rendering inside the console so whether you plug a headphone in or a headset to your controller directly or you use any of these dacs you'll still get to benefit from the 3D audio so I just want to cover that now don't worry about it so moving on it's important to know what kind of DAC you need and if you even need one at all the PS5 controllers are actually really nice at least from a sound quality perspective and they actually have a lot more power output than some people expect this is The Edge controller so it's a little bit different but I have a reason why I grab this I'll talk about it afterwards however this connects to your console via Bluetooth now a lot of people hear Bluetooth and automatically think the sound quality is going to be poor Sony has some pretty good Bluetooth codecs out there and if it basically uses a special codec to connect to the console with very good quality sound it does not compressed like your typical cheap Bluetooth headset or headphone out there so the sound quality is imperceptible to a lot of people and depending on what kind of headset you use this may be all you need the microphone preamp built in which is basically boosting your analog microphone so your friends can hear you talk is actually quite loud on this and as well in fact it's more powerful than an Xbox controller so even if you have a headset with a fairly weak microphone you can boost that in the PlayStation software the other concern that some people have with this is latency now because this is using a special codec the latency is actually the same or better than some wire decks in fact you can actually configure PlayStation controllers to work in USB audio mode through the controller settings on Playstation but the sound quality difference is basically imperceptible and perceivable you can't really tell the difference and it also actually has a measurably worse latency by only a few milliseconds but you're not gaining anything by doing that so I recommend just leaving it in Bluetooth mode so after learning what the Dual sense controller does why would you need a DAC well the answer is a lot of people don't need one however if you're looking for more power more or better features or perhaps a better sound quality improvement if you can hear the difference that's where the next portion of this video comes in so the last housekeeping thing to cover is that the PS5 uses something called UAC one or USB audio class one I mentioned that because I covered a good chunk of Dax or I will be covering a good chunk of decks in this video but that's not everything that works for the PS5 there's a good chance if you find a DAC online that says it supports UAC one it could and should work with the PS5 however you always want to do your research so if I missed what you were interested in and it's not in this video I'm sorry I can only cover so many in a reasonable amount of time but I feel like this selection covers a good majority of what people are looking to gather from so the First Act we're discussing today is the Fosse audio K5 Pro this is an 80 MSRP DAC but on Amazon it's typically in the low 60 range which is kind of cool considering what you get this is actually one of the better feeling built decks here in fact it's probably one of the best built dacs from a physical standpoint compared to everything here with exception of maybe the hell 2 and the creative G6 I love the way this thing feels and it's actually all metal which is awesome as well even the knobs up front are metal so the quality feels great now this DAC connects to your PS5 using the included USBC cable which always Powers it and what's really special is it has a separate microphone and headphone input this is incredibly important in perhaps the most important and most noticeable beneficial upgrade from using a controller is having the separate mic and headphone jack because of something called crosstalk [Music] crosstalk is actually inherent and more common in a lot of gaming headsets because of an issue of using a combo port or trrs when you have a trrs plug which still looks like a 3.5 but you see an extra black band on it that means that the microphone and the audio drivers themselves on the headset you know the speaker part they share a common ground and what happens is if you play music or games at a very loud volume some of that noise gets picked up through that ground signal because of the way alternating current works and that gets back into your party chat or microphone input on your console so if you play with friends and you're using a wired analog headset with a single connection to a controller or PC and your friends tell you they hear the game or you can hear the game play through the speakers that's because of something called crosstalk and it's not easy to get rid of because of the way that connection works so when you get a headset like an epos H6 Pro the GSP 600 from epos or the drop pc38x anything that has a dedicated split headphone and microphone connection like this it comes with two different cables now you can break out the two and you are no longer sharing a ground so the benefit from this is that your friends will hear a very clean signal on the microphone side you typically get better performance anyway but that's the main advantage of it now the back of the K5 Pro actually has a couple cool features in addition to just being a DAC for gaming on PS5 you have an optical input and a coax input which gives you additional sources that you can toggle through and there's an RCA output and the output the output can be used for like a headphone amp if you want something more powerful than what's built into this for some reason and then there's also the ability to connect that to external speakers or an amplifier to power external speakers moving on to the front you have three volume knobs and I mentioned they're aluminum and they're also textured they feel really nice but you have bass and treble adjustment there's no way to turn tone control off to bypass this you can set it in a zero position and this is a little detent so you can kind of feel able to stop the issue I have with the K5 Pro is it doesn't have a neutral sound profile the 200hz region is slightly recessed so you may lose some of that punch or slam depending on what headset you have if you have something like the Razer Kraken which has a lot of mid bass in that region this might actually be a good pairing because it's going to clean up the sound a little bit however if you have something like an epos H6 Pro closed back headphone that has a ton of deep bass but it doesn't have a lot of bass in the 200 Hertz region so this would make that one sound pretty bad in my opinion so it kind of comes down to what headset you have now you would think that adjusting bass would help fix that and bring it back up and to a certain extent it gets to a point where it does bring it back up but by boosting deep bass significantly so if you're using this for FPS and you do that just keep in mind that's not really an ideal EQ setting for first person shooters so this may not be the best purely for FPS but overall it's great for immersion it's a really fun amp and it cleans up the sound a lot from the PS5 I do like like this again I think it comes down more to the pairing than anything else the last thing I want to mention is this does get quite loud but also depending on what headset you connect it to it can overdrive itself so if you have a 32 ohm headset of which is more common on gaming headsets steel series Razer hyperx all of those use low impedance typically 32 ohms are in that region and when that happens if you crank this up there is some audible Distortion coming from this because it's over driving itself that's why this thing gets so loud if you have higher impedance like the hd6xx and I think I grab one this is the HD 560s from Sennheiser great FPS headphone no mic these have higher impedances and as a result they're like 120 ohm for example in that case this won't really distort in that situation so if you hear Distortion just turn the volume down a little bit you might be over driving it overall it's solid for a 60 price range it's just not without its flaws so moving on to the epos GSX 300 now this is available in white or black it's a 9 nice deck it looks nice it's really reliable it's well made lightweight pretty much all plastic uses micro USB because this has been out for a while and it has a separate headphone and microphone connection as well this is like your most basic form of DAC for this to just split off the headset audio in case you're lucky enough to have two separate connections like the Sennheiser and EPO stuff I mentioned earlier however the GSX 300 has no onboard EQ no extra bells and whistles and frankly the PS5 controller gets louder than the GSX 300 to me so the only reason why you would get this is if you have a very easy to drive headset like a hyperx cloud or a steelseries Nova or arctis headset and you want to use the two separate connections or even a Sennheiser drop pc38x for example if you're okay with a little bit lower volume this is fine however I think in this case it's outclassed by pretty much everything else here now for you headphone players out there if you don't have a microphone and you don't care for that that side you just want a good amp for your headphones this was a huge surprise for me this is the IFI Zen air and it's only a hundred bucks it has a full-size USB port on the back it comes with the cable you do not need to use the five volt input that's only if USB has no power and it has an RCA output for an external amp in case you want to use it for speakers but this is it's compatible obviously it works great on the PS5 it has power match and xbase and these combine depending on what headphone you you drive it with can power larger much more expensive headphones so if you have something like the high five and Aria stealth or zmf or Odyssey headset or headphone this has more than enough juice so you don't have to spend more than a hundred dollars to really power any of those guys I was actually surprised at how much I liked it it sounded great and even in games like Call of Duty the performance was impeccable I had no real latency issues no really other features to talk about the volume knob feels nice it's all plastic but it feels good I don't like that the headphone jack is so close to the volume now because when you're plugged in you kind of have to rotate it like this I guess if I had a nitpick but again if you're just looking for a headphone amp don't care about the mic and you're looking for a good bang for your bug this is a killer price for what you get now moving up to the 100 to 130 dollar price range you have some killer options and this is kind of where you get diminishing returns after this price point because there's just so much good stuff to pick from so I'm going to start with the Astro mix AMP pro TR this came out in 2019 so it's an older DAC but it was ahead of its time back then and because this uses an optical input you can actually connect this on the older PS4 when it had optical this had game to chat mix now pretty much nothing here really supports game to chat mix because Sony basically leaves the control to that into the console itself so you have to pull up the on-screen menu to adjust gaming chat mix unless you buy a Sony branded headset however there is a way to trick that for any DAC that has an optical input because you can connect an optical out from your television or purchase an HDMI audio extractor and in which case if you did that this would still have game to chat mix on PS5 so if you want a DAC specifically for that this is still something to consider the overall sound quality of this is okay I think it sounds a little dull in comparison to basically everything else but the the GSX 300 it's on the lower end for the sound quality in my opinion uh but there's some good features so it's really more for the controls you don't you do have onboard eqs that you can set the EQ profiles are kind of weak for what you can adjust and how extreme so for mild EQ it's great and if you need gaming a chat mix it's still a good option to consider I do like this it's just the problem is because other dacs have come out that are better now it's a little bit tougher of a cell the other thing to keep in mind this is the whole note of just sneaking in extra info during this video If you use an HDMI audio extractor to feed an Optical Connection into this and it's a HDMI 2.0 extractor you're stuck at 4K 60 in some cases as depending on which one you buy so which means you lose the 120 frame per second refresh rate the 120 hertz 4K connection that the PS5 came people of doing so it depends on what TV you have they do make HDMI audio extractors that pass that through so you still get 4k 120 or if your TV has an optical out you can just do it that way and it won't mess anything up I just want to cover that because there's another deck here that has that capability as well so overall I do like the controls of this I like the design because frankly this is the easiest one to adjust and use if you did get this working however if you don't go through all the hassle of the gaming chat mix I wouldn't take this over all of the others in the same price range so then you have the steelseries game deck Gen 2 which is the newest one and this originally came out with the Nova Pro wired last year so it's a newer deck and there's some huge benefits to this one in particular and then some drawbacks so I like this unit more than the Astro mix amp from a sound quality perspective it actually sounds better at the same volume it's just cleaner and a little bit better resolution so like your subtle details are better the other Advantage with the gamedac Gen 2 is it has two USB ports on the back USBC and depending on which version you get this is the PC PS5 version meaning I can connect one of the usbcs to my PS5 and the other one to my computer and now I have a single DAC that auto switches between both platforms with the same headset output the other thing I like that's nice on this is it has an onboard 10 band customizable EQ so you can use this multi-function wheel to control the on-screen display and set your own adjustments from the sub base all the way up into your treble so you kind of have the ability to do custom EQ on the fly on the PC side you have steel series sonar software so you can also use this as a good mix Amper PC with game to chat however there's no option to have game to chat mix on the PlayStation side it also has line in and line out to help streamers out there if you want a little bit more versatility to kind of connect this into a computer you know if you're trying to merge the two audio streams this is really one of the only ones aside from the mix amp that can do that the only thing that I don't like well there's two things if I had a nitpick the headphone output it's a combo Port only so everything's combined and it's recessed meaning that depending on which headphone you have I think I have most my cables unplugged but because it's recessed some of my headphones can't actually plug into this you have to buy something like this this has a splitter at the bottom but I will have a link in the description for adapters that will fit to basically extend it out to connect your normal headphone connection that's the only thing I don't know why they recessed it maybe from a stability standpoint for the Nova Pro but it kind of stinks from a universal standpoint the other thing is it's not really loud it's the weakest one here next to the GSX 300 but it is louder than GSX 300 it's closer to the controller volume so you're not really getting a benefit purely from output what you're gaining is all of the other features I talk about for cross-platform and adjustable EQ then you have the Sound Blaster X G6 which came out in 2018. now this was so far ahead of its time that even now it competes really well if not honestly beats a lot of the decks here especially for the money this thing sounds incredible it's really loud in fact it's louder than every other DAC I've covered so far this in low gain is louder than most of the amps I covered so far and in High game not only does it still sound good but it has a really good punch to it with really no Distortion now this is the one of the only other ones here that also has an optical input with the ability to cross the two so if you are leveraging an optical connection from your TV or an extractor you can now press the knob in or you can benefit from a game to chat mix using the G6 kind of a cool feature it's a bit unique and you also have the ability to do directmo which has no audio processing there's Scout mode and SBX so I'm not a huge fan of scout mode it applies like significant compression which can make footsteps really far away really loud but the hard part for me for FPS is that now takes away your ability to perceive how close they are in my opinion you can get used to it for a bit but because it's varying the volume I couldn't always tell how far people are I just always knew what direction they were coming from so I typically leave that off and then you have SBX which honestly that audio changed the impact and how much fun it makes games sound I strongly suggest trying it just because it's a blast now what's really cool about the G6 is you can see the headphone jack and the microphone Jack this particular unit has the ability to handle a headset like the epos H6 Pro I was talking about with the two dedicated mic and headphone Jacks but the headphone jack is also a trrs port meaning it's a combo Jack so regardless of what headset or headphone you're using you can use either combination of these plugs and still benefit from a lot of the performance this has now the G6 actually has onboard memory and you can configure everything on the PC so if you did want to make some special settings like putting in direct mode or doing your own custom EQ all these extra features can be done and enabled on the PC save it to the G6 and then go plug it into your PS5 and you can benefit from all of those changes so it's pretty robust and honestly if you don't need particular features like the Dual platform or chat mix on PC that the game deck is giving you or the way the Astro mix amp Works in this price range I lean towards the G6 it's just a pretty amazing little unit and it feels nice too I like the volume knob it's most mostly plastic and it's lightweight but the bottom is rubberized so it still feels really secure so moving up to the more expensive stuff now we're getting 200 and up and the first one is the epost GSX 1000 on PC I love the GSX 1000 because it has the best binaural audio engine I've ever heard for gaming it has this insane virtual Sound Stage that kind of makes it more immersive than any other DAC I've ever heard and usually I think that stuff is a gimmick and I always turn it off but I was pretty shocked at how much fun it made certain game sound especially open World stuff where you're kind of just playing at night and relaxing it's really immersive however none of those features even though it's built into the unit they didn't work for me when I tested on my PS5 so this is basically a more expensive GSX 300 with a little bit more volume output you do get a dedicated headphone and microphone connection which is great this has an analog out to turn this into a DAC for a speaker output you still need an external amplifier and it has a really nice volume wheel I like the stack but it's my much better suited for PC and at two hundred dollars I would not pick it over most other options here so then you move on to one of my favorites and that is the hell too yes I said but it's uh spelled differently so this is a really really powerful headphone amp and DAC in fact it's one been one of my favorites whenever I test audio file stuff for gaming this is usually my go-to on the PlayStation side because of the power output as it has now this has two USBC inputs but both have to be connected at the same time one of them is used for power the other one is used for your connection to the PS5 this does come with a USBC cable and separate power adapter to make sure that this has enough juice you have a line out and you also have an optical input there's no way to merge Optical with USB you basically have a nice toggle switch in the front to switch between both actually that's my gain this is the switch for your Optical versus USB now my favorite thing about this aside from the power is you have an analog microphone preamp knob so this little knob is actually changing how strong the microphone preamp is it has an excellent mic preamp so depending on what microphone you use having that adjustability is really convenient you also have this giant metal knob this thing's built like a tank it's all metal you basically have a nice black and red brick but depending on what headset or headphone you have whether it's something really high-end like a kilo Buck headphone that needs a lot more juice it can power that and if you flick the switch in High game mode it can probably power a Prius now the hell 2 lacks any ability to customize it there's no onboard memory there's no special features it's basically just a super high powered very clean excellent performing amp DAC if you only care about making your headphones sound the way they're supposed to sound in stock form this is arguably one of the best ways to do that in this price range and because it's all done via USB in the single unit whether you have a mic or not it's just incredibly convenient and I love the way this thing sounds now on the note of audiophile dacs and amps like the hell 2 this is another favorite of mine and I actually bought all the cables and firmware flashing to make this work so this is the JDS atom stack now the atom DAC this bottom unit can be flashed to support UAC one to work on the PS5 the newer version the atom plus which is only 110 dollars that's this bottom unit is a USB DAC to your Playstation then you have RCA outputs so that means you can use the atom DAC to connect to any headphone amp you want whether it's a tube amp or some big monstrosity that you have because you're playing games and you know what you spend thousands of thousands of dollars on an amp and you want to use it for PlayStation this is a really good way to do that now they also make a matching amp which brings the total price just over 200 so if you like this stack this is an excellent option as well but at 200 there's no support for a microphone so that brings you back to the hell too now they do offer a breakout cable it's a little 3.5 millimeter adapter that gives the audio output from the atom to power your headphones and then has a separate microphone cable that plugs into your controller so if you have a really high powered headset it's kind of a unique situation but you have a microphone on it you can use the controller for the mic and the JDS atom for the audio it's a great option but I mainly wanted to let you know that you could just buy a DAC like that and then use any amp you want then you have the Sound Blaster X5 from creative this thing is 280 dollars and it's an absolute Beast now it's not the loudest one here the hell 2 and the JDS atom are noticeably louder than the X5 even if you use the balance connection but more on that later so the reason why you would consider something like the X5 is if you just want a specific set of features because this does have a few unique things to it I'm going to start with the back USBC connection directly to your PS5 or PC it naturally works for both you have to unplug and switch Optical in and out you can listen to Optical at the same time of USBC but there's no dedicated gaming chat mix on the front I'll explain how that works in a sec line in and line out so you can have an AUX input and then send the audio that this is processing back out to another device like an external speaker amp something like that moving on to the front big old power button a mute button on the front and it's the only other deck outside of the hell 2 that gives you an analog volume knob for your microphone now what's cool about this one is this just like the creative G6 wherever I put that that's over here the headphone out also supports trrs so if you have a single headphone connection for your headset that has a microphone built in plug it into this middle one the microphone will still work and you can power it with this Giant volume knob so you have two knobs controlling the audio on that single port if you have something that does break out the connection and you have a separate mic well it still benefits the same way a high low gain switch a speaker out button so if you switch this it changes from headphone out to speaker out you can change some of the digital processing on this to go to direct mode meaning that it's not processing anything extra or you can toggle through onboard EQ presets so if you're gaming you can save up to four presets on it you would do that through your computer and then switch through for different game settings PC and console switch just put it in console for your PS5 and now the killer feature on this though is the Bluetooth this is the only one here that has Bluetooth and that's for an input so what's really really slick I about the X5 is you can pair your phone to this or PC whatever it may be and it will merge a wireless signal into your headphone output on your headset or headphone so if you're playing on your PS5 and you want to you know listen to YouTube videos or something watch my channel of course between games you can do that with this and it'll just seamlessly blend the audio you can control your phone volume separately on the phone itself or if you use the available creative app which is on the PC and your phone there is a digital mixer on the software so you can boost the volume separately and even change the Bluetooth Optical and even your analog volume that's on the back you can tune them all through the app change EQ profiles Etc this thing is insanely feature Rich and it also is the only one that has a balanced connection having a balanced connection meaning it has a dedicated pin for the ground if you remember talking about grounds earlier the left speaker has a dedicated wire for the plus and minus us the right speaker has a dedicated for plus and minus what that means in this case is the X5 is just louder so if you find that even in High Gain mode you need more juice if your headphone supports a balanced connection with the right cable you can switch to that and into High Gain mode this thing has a serious amount of power it sounds great it's very clean and I love that you can do custom EQ no real game to chat mix per se from a speed standpoint but if you want just every feature you can imagine for an amp for your PS5 the X5 is the way to go now hopefully I don't make your audio file gear selection Journey any more difficult but I do want to talk about two amazing products now this is two microphones from a company called antlion this is the mod mic Wireless it's a little bit more expensive than the uni but the wireless has a USB connection wirelessly it uses a special Bluetooth codec to your PS5 so you get an amazing sounding microphone and because of the magnetic Mount system you basically have an adhesive disc you can connect to a headphone like this and then attach this to any headphone you want and get audiophile sound with audio file microphone if you will so your friends will appreciate and family members will appreciate an excellent sounding mic the PS5 has a microphone built into their controller so the Dual sense controllers have a mic built in they just sound terrible so your friends will appreciate this they'll actually know what you're saying and this opens up the floodgates for basically any headphone product you want that's really handy if you want to use something like the hd560s which I think for the 200 and Below range is one of the better headphones you can use for gaming it just sounds great it has good Imaging so you can still have a good microphone and basically have a class leading gaming headset for a pretty reasonable price so this was a crazy long video I covered a lot and I I really hope that this helped you understand more of what the possibilities are to simplify things I do have some favorites especially when you factor in price features and Sound Performance for a more affordable setup I absolutely love even though this is older The Sound Blaster G6 just sounds so good for gaming it's what you want when you're gaming having features for like the custom EQ a couple little tricks and bells and whistles to change the sound quality game to chat mix if you decide to pursue that but you don't need it separate microphone input so you don't have the crosstalk issue in High Gain this can drive larger and more expensive headphones so when you factor all of that in and even in the small form factor USB powered it doesn't take up a lot of space or extra plugs on your wall I just absolutely love this unit for 120 so I think overall bang for your buck it's my top pick now naturally because the I5 zendax sounds as good as it does with as much power as it has for a hundred dollars it's the best value here for driving larger more expensive headphones that need more juice it sounds great and again because it's USB powered it's very easy to set up when you get into more expensive amps that have a microphone the hell 2 is usually what I use for something like the VCR model one in fact fact this is my favorite amp DAC for a higher end gaming headset like that which likes a little bit more power the hell 2 is great and just honorable mention to the JDS because this allows you to connect to anything and it measures incredibly well it's a really clean deck the last pick I know there's a lot here but the last pick is just to consider the X5 just because it's Unique enough from a feature standpoint there's nothing that gives you the ability to send your Bluetooth audio to a DAC for anything I discovered or discussed here you still get a lot of the benefits that all the others have I don't think this is a master at anything it's just a jack of all trades but it doesn't have any glaring faults and because of that you're paying a premium for it it's expensive so it should work well and it does but 280 is a tougher pill to swallow so it's really come down to you know what you think is valuable so we made it to the end there was so much to discuss and I hope that at least certain parts are a good chunk of this video were helpful or valuable to you if so don't forget to like And subscribe like I said earlier because I'd love to see it future videos and with that being said take care and I'll see you next time bye [Music] [Music]

Channel: GadgetryTech

Views: 46,805

Keywords: ps5 dac, ps5 dac amp, ps5 dac usb, ps5 hifi audio, ps5 external dac, ps5 headphone amp, ps5 best sound, best sound for ps5, ps5 audio setup, ps5 gaming dac, creative x5 ps5, astro mixamp ps5, fosi audio k5 pro, epos gsx 300, epos gsx 1000, schiit hel2 ps5, creative g6, creative g6 ps5, steelseries gamedac gen 2, ps5 antlion modmic, ps5 jds atom, ps5 ifi zen air, best dac for ps5

Id: zoh7TNvb9zo

Length: 30min 46sec (1846 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 07 2023