PlayStation 5 - Next gen is expensive

[gospvg]

What is the distance to the wall? Looks to be quite a bit? What is the black box?

 

Have you tried a vertical setup to see if you notice any difference?

[omus]

Just saying, I'd take it.... 

[Kevvy Metal]

34 minutes ago, Spacehost said:

It's got inches around the sides and a fully exposed front and back.

 

 

I had my first weird issue with my PS5 yesterday. It appeared to be related to an event not triggering while playing Mile Morales. I went to hit an "triangle action button" thing and nothing happened. Spider-Man just stood there and I had lost all control of him. Even more so, the controller now wouldn't work so I couldn't exit to dash. Even MORE so, I couldn't turn off the machine via the power button. Nothing would do anything, the game was running but I couldn't interact with anything. 

 

I had to turn the machine off at the wall! Which I don't really enjoy doing. And this resulted in safe mode boot and database rebuild which is likely par for the course. 

 

I've since read online to hard turn off your console you have to hold the power button a LONG time. Like 20 seconds. 

 

My PS5 has been working like a charm before and after this (touchwood), and is also completely silent (touchwood), this kind of seems like a bug with the game but it's kinda shit either way. 

[instasis]

34 minutes ago, Spacehost said:

Amazon say they'll give me a full refund as they have no replacements and none scheduled, or to talk to Sony. I'm not expecting word back from Sony very quickly, but I will update when I hear. Worst case I'm going to sell it at cost to someone local.

It was years ago, but Sony were super at replacing my launch day console back with the PS4.

[Eighthours]

9 minutes ago, Kevvy Metal said:

 

 

I had my first weird issue with my PS5 yesterday. It appeared to be related to an event not triggering while playing Mile Morales. I went to hit an "triangle action button" thing and nothing happened. Spider-Man just stood there and I had lot all control of him. Even more so, the controller now wouldn't work so I couldn't exit to dash. Even MORE so, I couldn't turn off the machine via the power button. Nothing would do anything, the game was running but I couldn't interact with anything. 

 

I had to turn the machine off at the wall! Which I don't really enjoy doing. And this resulted in safe mode boot and database rebuild which is likely par for the course. 

 

I've since read online to hard turn off your console you have to hold the power button a LONG time. Like 20 seconds. 

 

My PS5 has been working like a charm before and after this (touchwood), and is also completely silent (touchwood), this kind of seems like a bug with the game but it's kinda shit either way. 

 

Definitely a bug. In fidelity mode I lost control of Miles twice within the space of the first half hour of the game. When this happened, the controller wouldn't do anything and Miles just kept on running up the street forever. Even plugging a second controller in only let me go back to the home screen, but then no directions or buttons would work. I had to unplug the PS5 each time. Since I switched to performance mode there have been no such bugs at all. I've had no issues with any other games, so it looks like Miles Morales came in megahot and wasn't ready for prime time... at least in fidelity mode. Strange that the reviewers didn't seem to mention this.

[Kevvy Metal]

3 minutes ago, Eighthours said:

 

Definitely a bug. In fidelity mode I lost control of Miles twice within the space of the first half hour of the game. When this happened, the controller wouldn't do anything and Miles just kept on running up the street forever. Even plugging a second controller in only let me go back to the home screen, but then no directions or buttons would work. I had to unplug the PS5 each time. Since I switched to performance mode there have been no such bugs at all. I've had no issues with any other games, so it looks like Miles Morales came in megahot and wasn't ready for prime time... at least in fidelity mode. Strange that the reviewers didn't seem to mention this.

 

Yeah, this very well might be the case! I also had other weird scripting related things not working. Like a mission where you have to photograph potential suspects, and nothing would happen until I reloaded a check point. 

[Spacehost]

25 minutes ago, gospvg said:

What is the distance to the wall? Looks to be quite a bit? What is the black box?

 

Have you tried a vertical setup to see if you notice any difference?

The black box is a subwoofer against the back wall; there's a good few feet from the back of the cabinet to the wall, just a big air space.

 

Vertical doesn't really help any, and there's the very real risk that it'd fall over and crush my toddler or elderly mother in law.

 

I appreciate all the assistance but really, it is what it is.

[Kevvy Metal]

6 minutes ago, Eighthours said:

Strange that the reviewers didn't seem to mention this.

 

Also this will be because reviewers will only care about snagging an angle on some subjective idea that means absolutely nothing to most readers/players, or hook onto an open world trope to moan and complain about rather than provide any useful information at all.

[gospvg]

3 minutes ago, Spacehost said:

The black box is a subwoofer against the back wall; there's a good few feet from the back of the cabinet to the wall, just a big air space.

 

Vertical doesn't really help any, and there's the very real risk that it'd fall over and crush my toddler or elderly mother in law.

 

I appreciate all the assistance but really, it is what it is.

 

You could try @unleashedmaniac suggestion on the rubber o-rings but I agree with you just too much hassle for something that you have paid £450 and is not up to task. Best to either move it on or refund from Amazon & wait for the next revision.

[Spacehost]

Just now, gospvg said:

 

You could try @unleashedmaniac suggestion on the rubber o-rings but I agree with you just too much hassle for something that you have paid £450 and is not up to task. Best to either move it on or refund from Amazon & wait for the next revision.

If Sony do a swap and get me one without loud coil whine I'll probably have a go at dampening the fan noise on the replacement. If not then yeah, I'll just wait it out. Demon's Souls is great and the overall experience is otherwise fantastic, but I'm happy enough to wait for a more dependably quiet iteration.

[CrichStand]

1 hour ago, Minion said:

 

This is really tempting me to hit the buy button, I don't play many driving games and I don't tend to enjoy the more serious ones. Is this more like Driveclub then say Project Cars or Forza? Or can it at least be played in an arcade style mode, I just like driving games I can pick up and play without messing around with tuning and stuff...

Put it this way.......I’m a bit of a Sega fanboy at heart. I love classic arcade games, as I grew up on them - Outrun, Sega Rally, Ridge Racer etc. I absolutely loved the original Colin McRae games on PSone. This is like a true next gen version of them. 
 

You don’t need to mess around with any tuning and stuff if you don’t want to. There are full Junior WRC and full WRC career modes, with a slider option that sets the difficulty. You can tailor the game to how you want to play from the get go - various damage levels, permadeath on or off, driving aids on or off etc. You can just jump in if you want and do as little or as much as you want in terms of tinkering with settings. 
 

There are quick play modes (they really are quick play on PS5 too, thanks to the fast loading), where you can choose a location and stage, with any weather/time of day conditions or tackle a single Rally if you like. There are daily TT to have a go at etc. All of your times from the different modes get added online as you play regardless.
 

There are something like 13 different locations in the game all with 5 stages, all of them with dynamic weather and time of day! The point to point stages range from around a couple of minutes long up to white knuckle 20km stages! There are also lap based events. The tracks are absolutely brilliant, some of the best I’ve played in any driving game. You really can’t go wrong. With chase cam on it’s great. Stick the dash cam or bumper cam on though and it’s fucking epic! The Dual Sense works really well, both haptics and triggers plus certain sounds come through the speaker in the pad too which is nice. Oh and the 3D audio sounds really nice, especially in car. The only negative is that when using the in car view there’s a graphical glitch, that puts a sort of faint checkerboard effect over the windscreen at times. Seems like it’s something to do with the lighting. 
 

Anyway, WRC8 was one of my fav games last gen.  WRC9 has already had the most play time of the PS5 launch games I’ve bought. It’s a quality game and 100% one of the best Rally/driving games I’ve ever played.
 

 

[Uncle Mike]

I would really love to hear a recording of the sound yours makes, Spacehost. I recorded mine last night. Would love to hear a comparison.

[Spacehost]

1 minute ago, Uncle Mike said:

I would really love to hear a recording of the sound yours makes, Spacehost. I recorded mine last night. Would love to hear a comparison.

I'll see if my phone can pick it up.

[Madness]

16 minutes ago, Kevvy Metal said:

 

Yeah, this very well might be the case! I also had other weird scripting related things not working. Like a mission where you have to photograph potential suspects, and nothing would happen until I reloaded a check point. 

I had to do this a few times with MM. It never crashed my console but I had to reload checkpoints a fair amount. Didn’t matter too much as the loading was super quick!

[Alex W.]

Spacehost and Uncle Mike swap audio recordings. Combining them reveals a strange EVP reciting a date over and over again. Date arrives: bam!, Silent Hills announced. The coil whine was a Kojima twist all along.

[Minion]

@Fully Aspel wow thanks a lot for the informative review, I guess I'm going to have to get it now haha! I've always turned off vibration since it became a thing as I think it's gimmicky shit but Astros has shown me when it's used well and appropriately it's actually pretty decent, so I'll use that as an excuse to buy another game for my ever expanding collection!

 

As for the noise discussion mine is whisper quiet, I'm currently playing Demons Souls and downloading Monster Hunter World and there is just a very low humming sound. It's the best launch console I've ever had both in terms of hardware and launch games available.

[CrichStand]

30 minutes ago, Spacehost said:

If Sony do a swap and get me one without loud coil whine I'll probably have a go at dampening the fan noise on the replacement. If not then yeah, I'll just wait it out. Demon's Souls is great and the overall experience is otherwise fantastic, but I'm happy enough to wait for a more dependably quiet iteration.

Have you tried using a DB meter app, just to check how loud it is in comparison to other people’s consoles? Would be a bit of a pisser if you swap it out and then get another exactly the same. Maybe they’re all pretty much the same anyway?
 

The cabinet will 100% make it seem louder as the sound will mostly be diffusing out the front or deflecting off your back wall.  My PS5, even though it’s in the open and stood vertically, gets toasty warm on the sides whilst playing PS5 games, so I wouldn’t even place it horizontally never mind in a narrow, enclosed space. The hotter it gets, the more the fans are going to be working, thus the more noise it will make!

 

If it’s bothering you so much though, then just get rid of it asap. It’s not worth the hassle, especially if it’s ruining your enjoyment of games like Demons’s Souls and Astro Bot. I know plenty of people, including folk that have spent hours, if not days, unsuccessfully attempting to source one, that would take it off you in a heart beat.

[CrichStand]

21 minutes ago, Spacehost said:

I'll see if my phone can pick it up.

Just use a DB meter app. Recording it and listening back to it is absolutely pointless. 

[Spacehost]

9 minutes ago, Fully Aspel said:

Just use a DB meter app. Recording it and listening back to it is absolutely pointless. 

Oh of course, the moment I see how many decibels the sound is, I will immediately cease hearing it. Why didn't I think of that.

[MattyP]

6 hours ago, Shimmyhill said:

Are you suggesting that Sony have no thermal management built into their machine?

 

Its a bit silly blaming the crashes etc on cooling as the fan will spin up if it hits an temp it’s not happy with and it will shut down long before it gets to the point of crashing let alone self combusting - I know Sony are pretty awful at making consumer electronics these days but they don’t make dangerous stuff.

One of the memory chips appears to not have adequate cooling on it. If I look at what typically happens on a PC the processor itself has thermal controls on it and will shut down the system if it starts overheating, however random crashes can be caused by components overheating/failing. I've had PCs that will work fine for an hour or so then random crashes as things start overheating somewhere or some memory module is faulty somewhere. No problems until something tries to write to that memory chip then things start to crash.

 

It's probably just buggy software though but you can never rule out hardware either. Especially on these new boxes which are effectively PCs built into small spaces. Typically PC's running at these sort of speeds have lots of cooling and space around the components. What is kind of worrying through is that I thought the whole reason the PS5 shape and design was built around keeping it cool. However it looks like removing the side panels reduces the core temperatures?! Also reports are saying that it blows cool air out of the back. That is also not great as it implies the cooling system isn't working very well - especially if the unit is under load.

[Spacehost]

19 minutes ago, Fully Aspel said:

The hotter it gets, the more the fans are going to be working, thus the more noise it will make!

It's not even remotely hot. The fan isn't even doing much work at all, it's just chirping away while whatever component causes the coil whine tuned up and down as I look at different things in Boletaria.

[FiveFootNinja]

9 hours ago, Fully Aspel said:

May as well just stick some sparklers in it now, light them up and send it off in style! Hope you’re fully insured as that cabinet is going to go up like kindling! Lol.

It isn't.

[CrichStand]

17 minutes ago, Spacehost said:

Oh of course, the moment I see how many decibels the sound is, I will immediately cease hearing it. Why didn't I think of that.

Have I said that? No.

 

A DB meter will fairly accurately tell you how loud your PS5 is. Other people can then use the same DB meter, at the same distance from the console and see if your console is any louder than theirs and confirm if you have a louder than average or faulty machine. You will also have more of an idea if you’re likely to get a console that creates the same volume of noise as the one you already have as a replacement or not. Job done.

 

Recording the audio is a waste of time. What did you record the audio on? How loud did you record the audio? What are you playing the recording back on? How loud are you playing back the recording? It’s utterly pointless!
 

Or, like I say, if it’s bothering you that much, just get rid of it. Simple.

[scoobysi]

1 hour ago, Fully Aspel said:

The only negative is that when using the in car view there’s a graphical glitch, that puts a sort of faint checkerboard effect over the windscreen at times. Seems like it’s something to do with the lighting. 

I did wonder if that was an effect for Ford heated windscreens (they have wire mesh in screen), does it happen on all cars, I tend to use bonnet cam?

 

1 hour ago, Fully Aspel said:

The Dual Sense works really well, both haptics and triggers plus certain sounds come through the speaker in the pad too which is nice.

 

I particularly like the surface changes, really well done.

 

I’ll send out a few Friend Requests to the people on here I’ve seen mention WRC 9, will be good to get some people on friends leaderboards.

[Alex W.]

I don’t think that phone noise measurement apps are accurate enough or precise enough for what is being suggested here.

[Kevvy Metal]

Getting out dB meters to measure the sound of your console is very rllmuk. 

I have a combined kitchen/living room and I couldn't hear anything over the hum of my fridge even if I tried. 

[Quexex]

So all this chat about noise levels has made me notice my machine had become slightly noisier (not really an issue but definitely louder than D1). This is due in part to the soft setup I did D1 where the console was just positioned quickly on a surface by my TV. Since then it's been vertical behind the TV (slightly noisier if anything), then positioned horizontally in it's 'permanent' resting place, where it seems noisier (again not a level that brings any concerns). However, the permanent position has it with about 5 cm clear space before the wall! I've since moved it out to give 16cm of clear space behind.

[Harrisown]

Record the sound the console makes, loop it phase inverted, bang!!! Noise cancelledationazed!

[Qazimod]

5 minutes ago, Kevvy Metal said:

Getting out dB meters to measure the sound of your console is very rllmuk. 

 

Not until there's a dedicated thread listing everyone's results from quietest to loudest.

[Spacehost]

9 minutes ago, Fully Aspel said:

Have I said that? No.

 

A DB meter will fairly accurately tell you how loud your PS5 is. Other people can then use the same DB meter, at the same distance from the console and see if your console is any louder than theirs and confirm if you have a louder than average or faulty machine. You will also have more of an idea if you’re likely to get a console that creates the same volume of noise as the one you already have as a replacement or not. Job done.

 

Recording the audio is a waste of time. What did you record the audio on? How loud did you record the audio? What are you playing the recording back on? How loud are you playing back the recording? It’s utterly pointless!
 

Or, like I say, if it’s bothering you that much, just get rid of it. Simple.

A DB meter will give an approximate measure of overall noise at a given distance in a specific set of circumstances provided it is done so in a controlled environment. It will be next to useless in comparing specific console noise issues. Consistent fan rotation noise is going to be subjectively less annoying than a chirping fan noise as it causes some metal component to vibrate off the main board, or coil hum from a dodgy component on the board.

 

None of the noise is going to exceed that created by my TV speakers, but it's an annoying set of noises that not all of the consoles make and therefore indicative of a fault.