What exactly is going on with Black Ops 6's "Enhanced Headphone Mode" and its $20 pay tier?

What exactly is going on with Black Ops 6’s “Enhanced Headphone Mode” and its pay tier?

The first thing you realize after playing a competitive FPS with headphones is that you should never play a competitive FPS without Headphones on. All games sound best with your ears sandwiched between two nice speakers, but in shooters, the ability to isolate background noise and detect the direction of footsteps, shouts, and gunfire can literally make you a better player.

This relationship between skill and sound is the only reason I read an entire blog post dedicated to audio in Black Ops 6, and why I’m frowning at a new “Enhanced Headphone Mode” that promises to To maximize audio clarity for these I’m willing to part with an additional $20.

Some important details: This isn’t an in-house Treyarch feature, but rather a partnership with Embody, a company whose entire business is creating “personalized spatial audio” profiles for games using AI. The outfit also offers profiles for Cyberpunk 2077 and Final Fantasy 14, but this is the first time its technology has been applied to a competitive shooter.

The goal is to simulate 3D audio in headphones like Dolby Atmos or Windows Spatial Sound and “increase the directional accuracy of sounds played around the world,” Activision’s blurb says. One way to do this is to create a Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF) profile by literally scanning the shape of your ears and head to approximate how your ears record audio.

The Embody site description of Advanced Headphone Mode. (Image credit: Embody)

While Black Ops 6 will include a free-to-use “universal” spatial audio profile, the personalized HRTF feature, which Embody promises will take your audio to the “next level,” requires a $20 subscription that expires after a 30-month subscription -year term is valid for five years. day of probation.

So yes, technically you can pay for a better(?) audio processing experience in Black Ops 6, although I’m not ready to call that “pay-to-win” audio just yet. For one thing, it sounds like there’s a lot of excitement surrounding minor improvements. The key audio information in Call of Duty games (shots, footsteps) are already easily readable with a standard headphone configuration, so I’m not convinced that an additional layer of 3D processing will significantly speed up my reaction time to sounds.

That’s not to say the game won’t sound better or more immersive – the 3D audio is pretty darn neat – but for a game whose soundscape is dominated by the explosions of Predator missiles, grenades and constant soldier barking, I’m rather skeptical of any subtle directional moves will make a difference. I will definitely try this universal audio profile on startup and Perhaps Let it scan my ears to see if I can sign up for the trial without entering a credit card. Advanced Headphone Mode works on all platforms. If you just want this universal profile, activating it is apparently as easy as flipping a switch in a menu.

What exactly is going on with Black Ops 6’s “Enhanced Headphone Mode” and its $20 pay tier?

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