ROG Delta New Firmware

[skyhopper01]

Has anyone else noticed a huge sound downgrade with the latest Device SDK and Firmware for the ROG DELTA. Why touch what was not broken ? The Delta has now lost a lot of punchy bass tones. I am very disappointed as the Delta was my favorite headset.

[eduardo.labrin]

you are right, with the delta s I notice a donwgrade in the audio quality and that I'm testing it with the mqa codec, asus is on purpose to fail the peripherals for the consumption of new products?

[skyhopper01]

you are right, with the delta s I notice a donwgrade in the audio quality and that I'm testing it with the mqa codec, asus is on purpose to fail the peripherals for the consumption of new products?

Its Very frustrating, perhaps someone from ROG will see this.

[AndrasROG]

I have the 'animate' edition of this headphone... What version of the firmware and SDK are we talking about? When I was trying to put the MQA renderer to use I, at first, only managed to get the 1st 'unfold.' after having it show that the renderer itself is working in AC, I noticed my MQA tracks being... well, just as detailed (maybe more) but tamer? Not as 'in your face' as I honestly thought it would be.

I had a thread asking about what the "flat" EQ settings are for this headphone, and some users mentioned that people may not like the sort of boringness of delta s headphones -- since they are the 'flattest' ROG product

Well, I sure do miss the deafening bass from my previous speakers, but I like to tell myself sometimes that what I hear through these headphones is what I'm actually supposed to (if you know what I mean) -- no saturation of bass, treble, etc. A pretty close to 1:1 listening experience...

[xeromist]

For regular listening you should be able to use the EQ to adjust to your preferences. For Skyhopper, I'm not sure the EQ does anything when MQA is active. Nate has been testing Tidal so you might pop over to the thread Andras linked and ask him.

[Nate152]

Hey Guys,

I've had the ROG Delta S Animate for a short while, I'm still using my free trial on Tidal. I'm by no means an audiophile expert, but I do think I know good sound when I hear it.

I was testing MQA with the Armoury Crate sound optimization set to flat with the EQ off and the bit and sample rate set to 16 bit 44.1KHz, this is standard cd sound quality. Switch MQA on and you're listening at 24bits 96KHz at full decoder sound quality, which is generally found in high end home audio equipment. The reason for setting Armoury Crate flat is because you have no eq control when MQA is enabled, this keeps it a fair comparison. Testing it that way, I find MQA sounds significantly better and even louder.

As for the sound of the headphones themselves I will agree some songs could be lacking a little in bass, depends what I'm listening to. The mid range could maybe be toned down a touch, the highs are spot on as I can hear those crisp S's in most songs. My complaints could be how I want to hear it rather than how the master recording should be heard.

I use them more for games than listening to music though, the virtual surround is one of the best I've heard as there's little to no sound degradation when it's turned on. I can hear everything all around and above.

I personally haven't noticed any change with the new firmware update.

[AndrasROG]

Hey Guys,

I've had the ROG Delta S Animate for a short while, I'm still using my free trial on Tidal. I'm by no means an audiophile expert, but I do think I know good sound when I hear it.

I was testing MQA with the Armoury Crate sound optimization set to flat with the EQ off and the bit and sample rate set to 16 bit 44.1KHz, this is standard cd sound quality. Switch MQA on and you're listening at 24bits 96KHz at full decoder sound quality, which is generally found in high end home audio equipment. The reason for setting Armoury Crate flat is because you have no eq control when MQA is enabled, this keeps it a fair comparison. Testing it that way, I find MQA sounds significantly better and even louder.

As for the sound of the headphones themselves I will agree some songs could be lacking a little in bass, depends what I'm listening to. The mid range could maybe be toned down a touch, the highs are spot on as I can hear those crisp S's in most songs. My complaints could be how I want to hear it rather than how the master recording should be heard.

I use them more for games than listening to music though, the virtual surround is one of the best I've heard as there's little to no sound degradation when it's turned on. I can hear everything all around and above.

I personally haven't noticed any change with the new firmware update.

About the strange weaknesses of your listening experience... I, too made another comment here but decided to delete it since I was just feeling mega confused.

Do you know how MQA 'works' when there is a new signal under the MQA section of your device manager? Well, that was always 'N/A' for me when I used 'MQA passthrough' in Tidal. I thought I had a hardware renderer, that I can finally use that feature, and I DID hear stronger highs and lows in my MQA tracks since.

But that MQA indicator, once again, always showed N/A. It was only after I set it so that Tidal had exclusive control over the headphone AND turning off MQA passthrough, that the N/A signal disappeared in the device page... CRUCIALLY, this is when I may have noticed the seemingly reduced presence in certain frequencies that the headphone was playing after supposedly activating 'full' MQA rendering.

So then, what is the strangeness here? Well, I have found new information suggesting that MQA renderers can take on their job AND the software's job, therefore solely doing the job of FULLY processing MQA tracks...

I'd say that *maybe* Armoury Crate isn't showing the right MQA signal when such passthrough settings are enabled. Perhaps there is some inconsistency somewhere.

[Nate152]

Let's go to your thread here.

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?127487

[Kingdramanyz]

considered these, but ultimately went with corsair premium headset....these look nice but the software issues with every update are not worth the premium.