My 8KX came with the KDMAS already installed and the DMAS was provided as a retrofit kit. Otherwise, I would never have even tried the KDMAS. That’s lucky, because even though the KDMAS is considered a lower tier, it actually provides the best sound quality Pimax has to offer.
The stock sound quality of the KDMAS is poor out of the box. It sounds like a cheap pair of Walkman knockoff headphones from the 80’s. It was disappointing coming from the Index. But with good EQ applied, the sound quality really wakes up.
In fact, the KDMAS with EQ applied produced better sound quality than the Index in my A-B comparisons. Mostly because it has much better bass response than the Index. It’s a bit of an unfair comparison because it’s on ear versus off ear.
Being on ear also blocked out the whine from my four basestations which was an unexpected plus.
Of course, on ear has disadvantages in terms of comfort and immersion versus off ear. It’s better to have nothing touching your ears at all. And I also hadn’t realized until doing these tests between KDMAS, DMAS, and Index how much wearing on ear headphones changes how your own voice sounds to you. That reduces immersion as well.
Even so, overall I preferred the KDMAS over the Index audio, and this had a lot to do with my decision to switch to the 8KX as my VR daily driver. The Index has really great audio, so I was surprised by that. The KDMAS is not the equal of my expensive studio monitor headphones, but it’s actually pretty good. Not what I would have expected given its lackluster stock performance without EQ.
The KDMAS is what I use for audio on my 8KX now.
I used the free open source Equalizer APO to perform EQ. Peace is the open source GUI front end interface for Equalizer APO. Here are the exact settings:
KDMAS EQ (using splitter)
Pre Amplifying=0
1 Peakfilter Freq=10 Gain=-30 Q=1.41
2 Peakfilter Freq=21 Gain=7.5 Q=1.41
3 Peakfilter Freq=42 Gain=10 Q=1.41
4 Peakfilter Freq=83 Gain=3.5 Q=1.41
5 Peakfilter Freq=166 Gain=-4.5 Q=1.41
6 Peakfilter Freq=333 Gain=-6 Q=1.41
7 Peakfilter Freq=577 Gain=3 Q=1.64
8 Peakfilter Freq=1000 Gain=6 Q=1.41
9 Peakfilter Freq=2000 Gain=5 Q=1.41
10 Peakfilter Freq=4000 Gain=3 Q=1.41
11 Peakfilter Freq=8000 Gain=6.5 Q=1.41
12 Peakfilter Freq=16000 Gain=7.5 Q=1.41
13 Peakfilter Freq=20000 Gain=9 Q=2.99