Black Ops PS3 Chat Audio so freaking low! Any fix?

[lokiju]

I have a Turtle Beach Ear Force PX21 headset with mic for when it's just me playing which has separate controls for game and chat audio and it's perfect. When my wife wants to play also, we use two headsets for audio and a USB Mic for chat.

Everyone can hear us fine when we do that set up. We can hear all the game music and SFX but the chat for a lot of people in our team is so low we can only hear them like a whisper when in the game lobby and it's impossible to hear them when in the game.

I lowered the game SFX and music levels but it really didn't have much of an impact.

Is it just the game or is there some "trick" to getting the in game chat levels to levels that can actually be heard?

The weird part is I can hear some of my team members pretty well, not a loud as my Turtle Beach headset but loud enough to hear them while in a game.

I guess the Turtle Beach headset somehow separates and amplifies the chat levels, is there a device out there that does this also but allows standard headphones to be plugged in since I can't output to two usb headsets at once?

If I could find something like this by itself on the cheap I'd almost thing I could make that work with using a 1/8"-3.5mm splitter.

http://admintell.napco.com/ee/image...e_fidelity_usb_headset_ps500mm_cable_ends.jpg

 

[RavenSEAL]

Sounds like a headset issue, no problem here with the Sony BT or my speakers listening to voices.

 

[Malak]

Why not just use BT ear pieces? Separates the sounds, easier to hear people, and no wires.

 

[lokiju]

Why not just use BT ear pieces? Separates the sounds, easier to hear people, and no wires.

You cannot output chat audio to two sources so you have to split them.

We want to use headphones so we don't wake our son up since we play at night after he's asleep.

 

[lokiju]

Sounds like a headset issue, no problem here with the Sony BT or my speakers listening to voices.

This is not an issue for me either. If I'm playing by myself. The issue is you can only define one audio source for inputting and outputting audio from the ps3 settings.

 

[Malak]

You cannot output chat audio to two sources so you have to split them.

We want to use headphones so we don't wake our son up since we play at night after he's asleep.

I just looked it up and noticed the PS3 only supports one headset at a time. So are you splitting at the receiver? Maybe a setting on the receiver?

 

[lokiju]

I just looked it up and noticed the PS3 only supports one headset at a time. So are you splitting at the receiver? Maybe a setting on the receiver?

My Turtle Beach headset uses the composite output cables (only left and right audio, video via HDMI) with an adapter to then convert to a standard 3.5mm headphone jack shown in the picture on the bottom left http://www.turtlebeach.com/Portals/0/Products/PS3/PX21/tabs_html/images/PX21_whatget.jpg. At that point I'm using a 3.5mm splitter like this one http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pu...I4SX-qGkn5lMpPVdAeRnglymI6o9ySlvIpYH4b_NwoU3e and plugging in both headphones.

In the Playstation Audio settings I'm going into settings, accessory settings, audio devices and setting my USB mic to the input device (which works perfectly fine according to my friends) and setting the output to System Default Device.

Under Settings, Sound Settings, Audio Output Settings, I have it set to "Audio Input Connector/SCART/AV Multi". Under Audio Multi-Output I have it set to on so I can output to both headphones or my receiver via toslink without having to change it each time.

Game music and sound effects are very clear like this. It's only the chat audio that's the issue.

From what it seems like to me, the chat audio needs some way to be amplified independently of game music/sfx when being output through one connection.

Due to getting Dish Network hooked up this weekend and my new HD DVR from them only having an option for digital audio output of Toslink, I currently cannot also output my PS3 audio via Toslink (receiver does not have HDMI inputs) to my receiver since my receiver is a bit older and only has 1 Toslink input and 1 Coaxial Digital input (S/PDIF). I have ordered an adapter from Amazon that'll adapt the Toslink output from something (in this case my PS3) and convert it to Coaxial Digital (S/PDIF).

Until that comes in and gets set up, I'm kind of stuck with the set up I have now.

But once that does arrive, I am going to try setting the PS3 output to the Toslink option and then using the headphone jack on my receiver to see if having all outgoing audio from my PS3 going into a receiver, being amplified and then output to me via the headphone jack will resolve all of this, though I have no clue if it will.

It seems to me that the PS3 was not designed with having both chat audio and game audio in one solution. Hopefully the next version (PS4) will address these sort of things in general but also with more than one person using the console also.

Also worth noting is that I think the Turtle Beach headset is using the USB to power amplification of the chat audio specifically...

/Long reply