I got my Quest 3 on Saturday and since then, I could compare it very well to the Quest 2. Unfortunately, the microphone on the Q3 seems to sound awful compared to the Quest 2. Is there any news if this will be addressed in a patch?
I am specifically talking about lots of breathing noise, as well as a general lack of audio fidelity in recordings using the internal microphone. It almost sounds like a low bitrate and like lots of compression. I tested the mic using the build in screen recording, via link cable and air link.
Man, this is frustrating. Number 3 above is complete fiction. No such option to "Toggle Microphone" exists on the Quest 3. This is the 2nd post I have read where the solution has been completely made up.
it is not just the quality of the mic on a standalone Quest 3, it is the fact that other players can only hear you at barely a whisper. I have run in After The Fall with 2 other players on Quest 3, and all have had the same issue. I find it hard to believe that this was not a recognized problem prior to delivery.
Can confirm the Quest 3 mic at the moment is awful compared to Quest 2's. This is supposed to be their best headset, it makes no sense that they would cheapen out on the mic this badly?
Me and 2 others were testing our Quest 3's in vrchat last night and the bad mic quality was the first thing we noticed.
Hopefully it can be fixed with a software update, as I am already hearing some vrchat players re-considering their purchase of the headset. A good mic is essential for social VR, and so far the Quest 3 has not provided that.
As some other people here already mentioned, this is not a case of a dirty microphone or permission issues. This issue was there from the moment I (and other people) unpacked the headset. I would like to know, if there are any plans to address this with a software update soon or not. As I am playing a lot of social VR, this is a reason for me to return the headset. I hope, I am talking to a real person here and not to an AI Bot.
It sounds like bad signal processing/codec compression.
So, I did some more testing. I logged into my computer using Virtual Desktop on both the Quest 2 and the Quest 3 and did voice recordings using the Sound Recorder app on Windows 11. Both the Quest 2 and the Quest 3 sound fine. They have a bit of a different sound to them, but they sound good. As others have mentioned these headsets are brand new out of the box and having this problem. I'm guessing this is some sort of codec or audio bandwidth problem rather than a hardware problem since my audio recordings in Sound Recorder sound fine using Virtual Desktop, but social applications like VRChat sound bad. Let me know if there is any other testing you'd like me to do. I'd love to see this resolved. I have switched back to my Quest 2 in the meantime because of the bad quality.
I did a test and used Virtual Desktop to record my voice using the Sound Recorder app on Windows 11 and compared the Quest 2 to the Quest 3. They sound different, If you have the ability to do that, I'd be curious to hear your experience with using Sound Recorder as well. EDIT: Upon further listening, the Quest 3 is worse. You can hear the comparison here: https://youtu.be/X9e6BCY54oc
I did a test recording in Audacity using Air Link on both Q2 and Q3. The Q3 sounds noticeably worse, like going back years in mic tech. But, in VRchat, there is a further drop in quality. I will assume that: 1) There is a quality problem with the Q3 mic itself, either bad firmware or cheap hardware AND 2) VRchat has not updated for the Q3 yet, making the quality there even worse than it already is.
I hope it is something that can be fixed or optimized by Facebook. Even if VRchat fixed the quality issue on their end, the mic in its current state is still worse than the Q2's.
Oh, interesting. So I just went back and re-listened to the recordings with headphones instead of my desktop speakers, and you're right. It does sound quite a bit worse. Here are my recordings https://youtu.be/X9e6BCY54oc
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