Xbox Series X games could soon get an overdue audio upgrade

Xbox Series X games could before long get an overdue audio upgrade — here's how

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The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S are fix for an upgrade that could help games, music and movies sound better on external audio hardware.

Xbox spokeman Larry "MajorNelon" Hyrb tweeted that audio pass-through support is coming to an Xbox Insider Plan preview build, a testing ground for new software features before their full release.

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Pass-through can offload sound processing duties from the games console to a connected speaker or AV receiver, so if you lot ain i of the best soundbars, this update would assist an Xbox Series 10 brand much better utilise of it.

Although both the Xbox Series 10 and Xbox Series Due south back up advanced sound formats like Dolby Atmos, dedicated speakers usually take amend audio processing capabilities than consoles. So calculation sound pass-through could tangibly improve sound quality, peculiarly for movies and music playback.

Calling audio aficionados. Rolling out to Preview this week: Try Passthrough for higher fidelity audio with your favorite media apps flick.twitter.com/4fx58AM4s9April nineteen, 2021

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It's also an arguably overdue change: the terminal-gen Xbox 1 has supported audio pass-through since 2017, and so it's unclear why the Xbox Series X generation didn't only launch with it. The Series 10 and Series Due south as well opted not to include an optical connexion, which fabricated information technology trickier to interface with lower-end soundbars that don't have an HDMI port to use instead.

Still, progress is progress, and hopefully pass-through appears in a regular Xbox software update very soon. It won't affect players who only have their Xbox sound coming out of their Goggle box'southward integrated speakers. And for media that doesn't back up special audio formats information technology might not make a huge departure. But the feature will exist worth using if y'all have the hardware to employ with it.

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James joined Tom'due south Guide in 2020, bringing years of feel in consumer tech and production testing. As Audio Editor, James covers headphones, speakers, soundbars and anything else that intentionally makes noise. A PC enthusiast, he also covers the occasional spot of computing and gaming news, unremarkably relating to how hard it is to observe graphics card stock.