Sony’s Pulse Explore earbuds deliver immersive audio and one very useful trick

theverge.com:

Sony’s first pair of true wireless earbuds designed for the PlayStation 5 will arrive on shelves early next month, and I’ve been testing them out over the last couple of days. The $199.99 Pulse Explore earbuds offer lossless, ultra-low-latency audio when using the company’s new PlayStation Link wireless protocol. With most devices such as a PS5, PC, or Mac, that’ll require plugging in the included USB dongle. But Sony has baked support for PlayStation Link directly into its new PlayStation Portal handheld streaming gadget.

The Pulse Explore buds also support plain old Bluetooth, and in a super convenient twist, you can listen to audio over PS Link and Bluetooth simultaneously. So it’s effortless to take phone calls or listen to music on your phone in the middle of a long Spider-Man 2 session.

Sony has outfitted the Pulse Explore buds with planar magnetic drivers, which are far less common than the dynamic drivers found in the vast majority of earbuds. It’s not terribly surprising to see: Audeze, the headphone maker that Sony acquired earlier this year, specializes in planar magnetic driver technology. In the case of these earbuds, Sony says the Pulse Explore can “reproduce soundscapes with ultra-low distortion to deliver rich details and deep clear bass so you can hear exactly what the game developers intended.”

And in my relatively brief experience with these buds so far, clarity and separation are easily the biggest strengths I’ve noticed. It’s easy to distinguish small details and individual sound effects, even during moments of chaotic action in RoboCop: Rogue City, and the Pulse Explore earbuds did a fantastic job of making me feel like I was smack dab right in the middle of Alan Wake 2’s eery world. Sony’s 3D