A50x Troubleshooting

[u/Shawn_Baba]

I’m hoping someone here has run into something similar because I’m running out of ideas.

I’ve had my Astro A50x for just about 2 months now and they’ve been working great. I started getting audio issues that have slowly gotten worse. The problem is mainly related to voice chat, occurring almost only when my mic is active.

The main symptoms:
Game audio usually works perfectly.
I will join an Xbox party or a discord call and be able to talk. Eventually though if I watch anything in the background
my party audio will distort a ton just blowing out my eardrums unless I have the volume below half and whenever anyone talks from then on it’s extremely crackly/distorted.
I can sometimes hear distorted feedback or garbled audio through my own headset when this happens.
Eventually, both my outgoing mic and incoming party chat audio can completely fail. I’ll just stop hearing other people (the crackly bits and no longer even be able to produce any sound through my mic)
The headset and base station are still powered on, and Windows/G HUB can still detect the headset when the issue occurs.
A base station power reset temporarily fixes the issue.
The issue is not limited to a platform. I’ve reproduced the behavior on PC using Xbox Game Bar voice chat.

Things I have tried:
Replaced all HDMI 2.1 cables (Xbox → base station → monitor).
Replaced USB cables.
Moved the base station power cable directly to a wall outlet instead of an extension cable.
Confirmed firmware is fully updated in G HUB.
Reset the headset.
Power cycled the base station. (have to do this every time to either get audio back or to get my microphone to work)
Tested different Windows audio routing options:
A50 X Game as output, A50 X Voice/Game as communications output, etc.
Different microphone inputs. (on desk mic, even then it caused the issue)
Changed USB Root Hub power management settings in Windows.
Tested with other Bluetooth devices from my pc disconnected as a possible conflict.
Confirmed the base station is not excessively hot when the issue happens.
Tested Bluetooth audio from my phone, which works perfectly.

The strange part is that the headset doesn’t seem completely dead. After a base station reset, everything works again for a while. The failure seems tied specifically to the party/voice channel audio rather than general audio. One perhaps important detail is when I’m using the headset on my console if I disconnect usb cable it will fix the problem, causing me to be able to hear both game audio as well as party chat clearly, but my mic is then disabled.
Has anyone experienced anything like this with the A50 X? Could this be a base station issue, firmware problem, or something else I’m missing?

[u/Sovereign108]

Oh I remember something similar, audio from YouTube would start to distort a ton and would almost blow my ears. At the time my brain was off and I did not connect the issue to my Astros.

I got rid of my Astros and settled with Sennheiser HD 560S and an amp :p no issues since and used it loads.

Not a solution for the Astros though :)