I suspect many of you are going to first ask, why do I want this? It’s because I run a Buttkicker haptic motor on my chair from the Optical out of my TV, but PS5 disables the audio to HDMI when you choose the audio setting to send both game & chat audio to the Headset.
But then why don’t I just choose to only output chat to the Headset, and game audio to the TV? Because I don’t want to bother my squad with echoing game audio coming from the TV to the Headset mic, and miss out on the full benefit of 3D audio through the headset.
Xbox One & Series X/S allows you to choose to output to either TV, Headset or both at the same time in its audio settings, and my TV continues to output from its Optical even when it’s muted, so I still get near-silent subwoofer rumble from the Buttkicker. This is what I’d like to acheive with my PS5, when the setting to output all audio to Headset is selected.
The PS4 also had this limitation, but had the workaround of simultanteous output from its Optical even when full audio was sent to the Headset. Of course, Sony omitted the Optical connection on the PS5.
There are also Headsets with Optical or HDMI passthroughs that could address this, but to date not with the other features & functionality I am seeking.
When a PSVR2 is in use the PS5 will output full audio to both HDMI & Headset, and if it didn’t also reduce the resolution output to the TV that’s how I would rig this solution! But it demonstrates that simultaneous output of full audio is possible.
Does anyone think this could be achieved with a motherboard modification, and how involved would it be?
Thanks for your interest! 