I kind of hate watching the struggles some people have had with the DMAS when the KDMAS is better anyway and doesn’t have those problems. The DMAS is supposed to be the highest tier option, and it’s priced much higher than the KDMAS. And yet its performance (even when working properly) is actually worse.
I bought both the DMAS and the KDMAS. My 8KX has no whining or other problems using the DMAS. I did several A-B comparisons of sound quality between the two. And I also compared them against the Valve Index as well.
My results were:
KDMAS > Index > DMAS
The Index is renowned for its excellent audio quality. And yet I found that the KDMAS (with EQ from my guide) actually sounds better. Mostly because of better bass reproduction and advantages of on ear vs off ear.
The downside, of course, is that the KDMAS is on ear. But in terms of sound quality, I believe it to be the best built in VR audio that is available on the market today.
Bad news: Whining buzz is still there, you can tell right away because its has the hum ad soon as you turn the headset on audio doesn’t have to be playing.
Was about to give up and then I tried something. I used the y-cable that comes with the KDMAS and holy crap total beautiful silence!
I wondered if they were even plugged in. So I fired up the little nightmare soundtrack as its has alot of quiet sections in it.
Perfection!
So then I thought… let me do the unthinkable… Im going to try the Y-cable with the DMAS. Total silence (good sign, but how do they sound).
Played some music. clean buzzless audio, albeit much quieter than without the y-cable.
I installed Boom3d it helps but i’m not a fan of using it adds too much conplexity to my setup. Multiple headsets , voicemeeter, equalizerAPO etc…
plus it was still too quiet.
I prefer the loud, full bass and sound isolation of the Kdmas anyway.
Now I just need to figure a nice way to route the y-cable.
I really hope the 12K has this sorted.
As it stands I hope there is a KDMAS option for the 12K.
Right. The KDMAS requires the y-cable. It will not work correctly without it. The KDMAS is 8 ohm. For whatever reason, the 8KX runs 8 ohm devices only off of the left side jack stereo jack. The DMAS is 4 ohm and runs off of the individual left and right side jacks each in mono. The 8KX autodetects and switches that left side jack between 8 ohm and 4 ohm modes (note that it only performs this detection and mode select once at boot time).
The buzzing/whining problems that early production 8KXs have is associated with the 4 ohm mode. It suggests that Pimax designed them to support 4 ohm for the future DMAS but had not actually tested 4 ohm on those earlier headsets. They seem to have only discovered that there was a problem there once DMAS shipped years later and customers started using the 4 ohm mode.
As an 8 ohm device, KDMAS will not work properly when connected to the left and right individual jacks. It will do weird things which may or may not be obvious abnormalities, and the behavior is unpredictable. It did something a little different on each of three Pimax headsets (two 8KX and one 5K Super) I tried it on. Not recommended.
I expect the 12K to have this sorted. The DMAS does actually have higher quality drivers than the KDMAS, but its sound quality is crippled by the 8KX not having enough power in its amplifiers when running in the 4 ohm mode. Also because the DMAS speakers sit too far away from the user’s ears.
The 12K, by contrast, is designed with DMAS as standard rather than a later retrofit. In the interview with MRTV, it was spoken of as a “DMAS 2”. And what else was significant in that interview was the mention of 12K doing onboard audio processing to improve the sound quality. That should eliminate the need for 3rd party EQ such as I described in my guide. On the 8KX, the sound quality is significantly hobbled by Pimax using stock Windows drivers which play a raw signal with no stock EQ settings. This is why adding 3rd party EQ substantially “wakes up” the sound quality of the KDMAS like a night and day difference. That will be built-in stock on the 12K.
My one concern is that the DMAS on the 12K might still have the speakers too far away from the ears. That might not have changed relative to how it mounts on the 8KX. Hopefully Pimax addresses that in the 12K as well.
so the device assumes 4ohm when connecting TRRS cables to each side? Why did the even use TRRS instead of TS connectors since each side is mono? Maybe I can understand if they used TRS so that regular headphones could be used on left.
i wonder…is there any external means to fix the 4ohm mode say you plugged the dmas to a ycable and then into a tiny usb dac capable of 4ohms.
ITs funny because they stole so much of the headstrap design from the Vive Pro, they should have also copied the hinges of the pro as well.
I took the headphones off of the vive pro just to check if they were compatible, but it seems Pimax didn’t copy that either.
Lol I just realized there’s a surprising amount of neck accessories.
Edit: Seems this might actually not be a joke, BOSE has one and apparently its good! Could this be the off-ear alternative Im looking for? The only concern would be positional audio when turning your head. But it might not be a problem.
