Wednesday, June 10th 2020
Bang & Olufsen and Xbox Partner up to Deliver Highend Audio Proposition for Gaming
The purpose of this new collaboration is to create a new audio proposition to cater for the high-end segment within gaming by leveraging on Bang & Olufsen's core capabilities of sound, design and craft. This will include "Designed for Xbox" functionalities, which will ensure seamless connectivity and an enhanced user experience. Vice President and Head of Product Management at Bang & Olufsen, Christoffer Poulsen is excited about the new collaboration and the long-term commercial potential for Bang & Olufsen.
"The gaming industry has grown significantly over the last few years across age groups, gender and countries, and we expect this trend to continue. The technology has advanced significantly in gaming, and enhancing the sound experience offers a place for us to play a key role. By entering the gaming industry, we want to do what we do best: delivering outstanding sound performance wrapped in astonishing design and solid craftmanship. We see a big commercial potential within gaming, and in Xbox we believe we have found the ideal partner to realise that potential," Christoffer Poulsen says.
Matt Kesselring, Head of Hardware Partnerships at Xbox says: "We're excited for the launch of Xbox Series X later this year and ushering in the next generation of gaming. As we march towards release - we're excited to partner with Bang & Olufsen to bring a new premium tier of gaming audio to market for Xbox and Bang & Olufsen fans around the world that travels with you everywhere you love to play Xbox" Going forward, the two companies will share additional information when available.
Source:
Bang & Olufsen
Matt Kesselring, Head of Hardware Partnerships at Xbox says: "We're excited for the launch of Xbox Series X later this year and ushering in the next generation of gaming. As we march towards release - we're excited to partner with Bang & Olufsen to bring a new premium tier of gaming audio to market for Xbox and Bang & Olufsen fans around the world that travels with you everywhere you love to play Xbox" Going forward, the two companies will share additional information when available.
7 Comments on Bang & Olufsen and Xbox Partner up to Deliver Highend Audio Proposition for Gaming
I really cant stand this pompum with audio marketing. Lets be real... at best were talking a vanilla implimentation of one of the newer AKM or ESS dac cips and opamps. Maybe some speakers in bullshit enclosures that look gamery. Fancy looking earbuds and headsets being driven by whitebread off shelf crap. Which can sound good. But not high end lol.
Now... if they were putting a fully discreet audio topology in there I might buy the claims. But otherwise at best it would have to be "highend" in the same way that Topping or SMSL are high end. The question is, do gamers care about .000001% THD? :laugh: I mean... how good is the sound coming out of a console really gonna be to begin with?
Call me cynical... but with consoles I kind of assume were talking integrated audio solutions, which can really only sound so good. Calling it astonishing is probably very generous lmao
Or will they make some kinda crazy dongle? But I mean... at that point you can run an optical into a real dedicated system.
I dunno.... smells like over glorified BS to me.
No thank you, I'll stick with my SMSL SD-793II + ATH M20x combo :DSteelseries already has their GameDAC and selling like hot cakes, why do you think these will not work? :D
But no, that is the problem I was getting at. At the end of the day it is fluffed up crap... basic designs sold as some revolutionary thing when really they are massively overcharging you for basically the bear minimum of 'good' audio. You know how GPUs always have reference cards? It's kinda like that. These DACs and opamps have all sorts of data that comes along with them, including sample circuits, within which the chip will perform within specced parameters. A lot of consumer-level audio stuff masquerading as high-end just kinda does that and tells you "AKM4493!" or whatever it's got in it as a selling point. They won't tell you it's a plug-and-play design, like their competition. They use marketing to sell up. And they sometimes don't even stick to the specced components and will even cheap out on those! Fortunately for them, the latest gen DAC chips out there tend to sound much better than ones even 5 years ago, so they can sorta get away with it sounding okay and not offensive. So they take a nice chip, drop it in an overwhelmingly common configuration, then throw it in a fancy enclosure and sell it to a fast-growing high-end market, or so they will tell you that you are.
And the thing is, in certain measurements, they're up past the audible range in distortion. THD and SINAD are probably off of the charts, if you enjoy the sound of charts. But honestly now... in reality, they're not 'astounding' to hear. Just 'not shit'. Like, they can sound good enough for most. Better than onboard by at least a little bit (though since the chips now are improving again after many years of total stagnation, that's not always so true - often it's the same or better shit on your mobo or in your console, and like I said, the dedicated ones aren't necessarily 'fancier' in implementation.)
But I can tell you one thing... there isn't an ESS DAC implementation out there that would truly be high-end at an anywhere near reasonable price for normal people. The really good ones are an expensive part, and bringing out thier full potential isn't as simple as tossing them in a churned-out negative-feedback style design with a 'short' filter and calling it high end. Sabre DACs especially have issues that are hard to make fully go away. It requires a custom design with a lot of listening tests, measuring, re-measuring and some pretty expensive components. Otherwise they sound... like a Sabre :p TI is the same way. AKM, to a lesser extent, though some of them are REALLY good, they're only as good as what they go into. You aren't going to see it in a 'gaming' DAC. I have a hard time believing that B&O will be the ones to make the ONE of those things that actually stands out in how it sounds... pretty much no matter what they make, you are likely paying more because it says it is for gaming.This is case in point, too. That is a basic barebones DAC with a lot of marketing tacked on. It's a DAC to go with your gaming headset, but what other than that makes it a gaming DAC over a $50-$75 SMSL one with similar chips and opamps? Internally they're probably about the same, down to the actual implementation of the core components. There really is only so much you can do at that price point. But somehow one costs significantly more. This stuff is easy to make and it passes, but is that what we should be calling high end? I don't want to gate keep here, but to me it's a gimmick market. Is it the silly 'headphone surround' crap that always adds nasty IMD and induces terrible phase problems? Is that what true high-end is now? Cuz if so, I am officially an old fuck and have possibly gone deaf.
And yeah, they may be popular due to visibility and accessibility. And they probably sound okay, but the marketing is still garbage. And unfortunately it shapes the market. People think this is what 'high-end' is when not only is it not high-end, but they could actually do better for thier money with a 'non-gaming' dac/amp with an optical in. You can plug that into your consoles too! And it'll sound pretty much the same. I can almost guarantee that lol. The only justification for more is if you need mic functionality in the system itself.
They will work. They're just nothing special at all, and they cost too much, even at $125. To me, it's just not worth that. I don't want a gaming-centric audio product. I want one that's built for audio! Why does it have to be gaming? What is the 'gamer sound'? Are they trying to say it only sounds good for games? :laugh:
Really though! What is it about the sound exactly that is specific to gamers, that isn't needed in any other high-end system? The only thing I see is mic connectivity, but to me that's still no excuse. It's a basic feature. USB recording interfaces do I/O with their DACs.Haha, that seems to get to the best of them at some point. I'm noticing with the younger market of audiophiles, they're getting sold on a lot of crap about what counts. And the stuff they call 'the best' is conveniently wayyy cheaper to make for the companies that sell it. Chi-fi everywhere.
It's no different from the PC market playing the benchmark games to sell people on stuff that's not actually THAT innovative, for the full price of actual innovation.