Free Boom mics

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  • Bamf
    Bamf Posts: 28
    edited April 2014
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    sframsden3 wrote: »
    I think the concern here is how do we know that this is the same guy and actually the COO? This is his first post on the forums, so it is somewhat sketchy...

    the concern is valid. im just tryin to vouch for the guy since I have had previous experience via email with him.

    post something on Polk's facebook page if you need clarification/confirmation. Joe also posts on there frequently.
  • sframsden3
    sframsden3 Posts: 52
    edited April 2014
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    I received my boom mic today. Mic sounds great as I tested it out right after I received it. Thanks to Polk for sending them out, but I hope they are harder at work to fix the near field mic issue and don't rely on the boom mic to keep customers happy in the long run. A Polk representative needs to update the community on the current status. If there isn't a fix by the April OS update I have a feeling they may lose some customers.

    There was a controller firmware update in the latest beta build, and it said it is supposed to improve headset audio performance, but I haven't received the latest beta update yet on my console to test it out. Since it specifies "audio" performance, I have a feeling it isn't going to solve the Polk mic issue...
  • Zeros
    Zeros Posts: 940
    edited April 2014
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    Bamf wrote: »
    Joe T. is the COO of Polk USA.

    Ive emailed him previously about the adapter shipments.

    So, I would guess that what he states on here is not "trolling".

    I have also emailed back and forth with Joe, so I can vouch for him as well.
  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 7,658
    edited April 2014
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    Hello,
    Polk's Australian gaming partner can be reached at aiecustomerservice@allinteractive.com.au or via telephone at +61 7 56575859. They have confirmed that the mics are scheduled to reach them today and they will begin shipping out on Monday and Tuesday so depending upon where you live they should be in owner's hands within a week.
    Regards, Ken
  • Superdude
    Superdude Posts: 34
    edited April 2014
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    Got the Boom Mic here too! Worked great last nite!!!
  • shepx2
    shepx2 Posts: 646
    edited April 2014
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    sframsden3 wrote: »
    I received my boom mic today. Mic sounds great as I tested it out right after I received it. Thanks to Polk for sending them out, but I hope they are harder at work to fix the near field mic issue and don't rely on the boom mic to keep customers happy in the long run. A Polk representative needs to update the community on the current status. If there isn't a fix by the April OS update I have a feeling they may lose some customers.

    There was a controller firmware update in the latest beta build, and it said it is supposed to improve headset audio performance, but I haven't received the latest beta update yet on my console to test it out. Since it specifies "audio" performance, I have a feeling it isn't going to solve the Polk mic issue...

    Unless they make a major change to the firmware, April's will not fix it. The fantastic boom mic will have to do, for now. And maybe for a while. I doubt Polk would have sent them out if they expected MS to fix it quickly. Doesn't make smart business sense.
  • sframsden3
    sframsden3 Posts: 52
    edited April 2014
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    shepx2 wrote: »
    Unless they make a major change to the firmware, April's will not fix it. The fantastic boom mic will have to do, for now. And maybe for a while. I doubt Polk would have sent them out if they expected MS to fix it quickly. Doesn't make smart business sense.

    Completely agree with you. I was hopeful... I tested it out last night when my system finally got the update but I didn't notice a difference in mic volume. I believe the controller firmware update was specifically for audio fixes in terms of crackling that was heard at times. The firmware is also supposed to fix the random disconnects some users were experiencing.
  • Holger
    Holger Posts: 10
    edited April 2014
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    COOJOE wrote: »
    Sorry guys, a lot of stuff going on right now. Joe the COO here. Chat Pro mics have landed in Europe, our warehouse has the names and will be sending out to folks in the UK and beyond very shortly. Our distributor in Australia will receive their first shipment on 4/4 and will be shipping them early next week. If you are in the US or Canada and have not received them, I suggest you call our Customer Service folks at 800-377-7655 to make sure you are properly registered. We are expecting our next shipment in the states on 4/4, we're simply out right now...and we ordered a ton of them, we just thought it best to send the first shipment out when we got it, rather than wait till we could fulfill all at the same time. Really appreciate your patience...helps to keep us sane right now. Joe

    Sorry to ask! I am a bit an older customer (50) but one thing makes no sense to me if I am using my head. If a company like POLK is selling a product like the 4SHOT headset, you do product tests. So POLK has known from the beginning that the microphone wasn't working as it should! Therefore POLK did ship out a faulty product! I mean it is clearly that POLK did know it because the BOOM MIC has to be produced to fit the POLK 4 SHOT! I am right?

    I am in Canada and didn't get any email or boom mic yet!
  • shepx2
    shepx2 Posts: 646
    edited April 2014
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    Holger wrote: »
    Sorry to ask! I am a bit an older customer (50) but one thing makes no sense to me if I am using my head. If a company like POLK is selling a product like the 4SHOT headset, you do product tests. So POLK has known from the beginning that the microphone wasn't working as it should! Therefore POLK did ship out a faulty product! I mean it is clearly that POLK did know it because the BOOM MIC has to be produced to fit the POLK 4 SHOT! I am right?

    I am in Canada and didn't get any email or boom mic yet!

    The 4 shot is the same headphone as the Melee, which works fine on the Xbox 360. There were released months ago. I would think it is hard to do product tests on items released in the future. Sure, Polk gets earlier access to info and hardware than we do. But considering how many problems they are still having with the Microsoft chat adapter, this long after release, it's obvious MS did not have the hardware or software ready for testing like Polk would have wanted.

    My personal guess is this: they got some early adapters for testing (maybe a month before adapter release, if they were lucky). This would be well after the headsets were built. They found a problem, couldn't get an adequate answer from MS on when the software would fix the issue, and started working on the chat pro immediately as a safety net.

    MS has rushed the Xboxone to market in so many ways. But, these issues are the price we early adopters pay to be part of the launch.
  • COOJOE
    COOJOE Posts: 6
    edited April 2014
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    Shepx, you are a very smart individual, I appreciate your post. We have taken some pretty big shots out there, and well-deserved...it is our name on the package. We obviously test everything, from validation to pilot to prepro to MP1 and beyond, we spend a lot of resources on validation and IQC. The 4shot was a different for a lot of reasons. Joe
  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 7,658
    edited April 2014
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    Hello,
    Just to confirm "COOJOE" is exactly who he says he is, the main guy at Polk Audio and if you have any questions he is the one to ask. He'll find the answers, if at all possible.
    Regards, Ken
  • sframsden3
    sframsden3 Posts: 52
    edited April 2014
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    COOJOE wrote: »
    Shepx, you are a very smart individual, I appreciate your post. We have taken some pretty big shots out there, and well-deserved...it is our name on the package. We obviously test everything, from validation to pilot to prepro to MP1 and beyond, we spend a lot of resources on validation and IQC. The 4shot was a different for a lot of reasons. Joe

    Joe, nice to see you on the boards here. I don't speak for everyone but I want to say thanks for the temporary fix with the boom mics. Any word yet on whether there has been a software fix for the near field mic and it is in the testing phases or are we still a ways off from this?
    Hello,
    Just to confirm "COOJOE" is exactly who he says he is, the main guy at Polk Audio and if you have any questions he is the one to ask. He'll find the answers, if at all possible.
    Regards, Ken

    Thanks for the confirmation Ken.
  • COOJOE
    COOJOE Posts: 6
    edited April 2014
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    MSFT has not given a date specific for the next software drop, only to tell us soon. They have a lot of considerations to cover with this fix, not just the 4shot.
  • Holger
    Holger Posts: 10
    edited April 2014
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    COOJOE wrote: »
    Shepx, you are a very smart individual, I appreciate your post. We have taken some pretty big shots out there, and well-deserved...it is our name on the package. We obviously test everything, from validation to pilot to prepro to MP1 and beyond, we spend a lot of resources on validation and IQC. The 4shot was a different for a lot of reasons. Joe

    Hello Joe.
    Thanks for being so honest and I do know that it needs a lot of work from POLK to pull up a new product.
    Anyways. I am 50 years young. So I am a little bit longer around in gaming than most of your forum members. Why did POLK ship out headsets they did not work with the XBOX one? I am not at the same page with Shepx to give POLK the credit to send out extra microphone because POLK designed the headset and you did know that the Melee has also issues. I did check some other gaming pages where they tested gaming headsets and the micro was an issue.

    Would it be not be better to hold back on an product, wait until the extra microphones are coming in an ship the product out right away with a note that a software fix is on the way?

    And we all know the answer without you, Joe, giving us an answer on my question. Right Joe?
    What happens in the moment with your POLK 4 SHOT headset, Joe? It get "ripped" in parts and all the good work POLK did put into it is for nothing. Review postings in the internet putting the 4 Shot as second last headset! Only the included chatset from Microsoft gets lower points. Everyone is posting negative reviews like POLK 4 shots are not useable as gaming headset!

    I do really not know how POLK could release this "gaming" headset. Hopefully the guy who is responsible for the early release is only getting a "headnut". If I would sit as CEO on the chair....... Sorry! No offense again. It is only sad that companies get away with that in our time.
  • Zeros
    Zeros Posts: 940
    edited April 2014
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    Holger, you aren't possibly related to a guy from Australia, are you?
  • Holger
    Holger Posts: 10
    edited April 2014
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    Zeros wrote: »
    Holger, you aren't possibly related to a guy from Australia, are you?


    Hugh Jackman, Geoffrey Rush, Eric Bana? No. German! ;-p
  • sframsden3
    sframsden3 Posts: 52
    edited April 2014
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    Holger wrote: »
    Hello Joe.
    Thanks for being so honest and I do know that it needs a lot of work from POLK to pull up a new product.
    Anyways. I am 50 years young. So I am a little bit longer around in gaming than most of your forum members. Why did POLK ship out headsets they did not work with the XBOX one? I am not at the same page with Shepx to give POLK the credit to send out extra microphone because POLK designed the headset and you did know that the Melee has also issues. I did check some other gaming pages where they tested gaming headsets and the micro was an issue.

    Would it be not be better to hold back on an product, wait until the extra microphones are coming in an ship the product out right away with a note that a software fix is on the way?

    And we all know the answer without you, Joe, giving us an answer on my question. Right Joe?
    What happens in the moment with your POLK 4 SHOT headset, Joe? It get "ripped" in parts and all the good work POLK did put into it is for nothing. Review postings in the internet putting the 4 Shot as second last headset! Only the included chatset from Microsoft gets lower points. Everyone is posting negative reviews like POLK 4 shots are not useable as gaming headset!

    I do really not know how POLK could release this "gaming" headset. Hopefully the guy who is responsible for the early release is only getting a "headnut". If I would sit as CEO on the chair....... Sorry! No offense again. It is only sad that companies get away with that in our time.

    Bud, I have a feeling you know nothing about running a company... Leave that to the guys sitting in those chairs, thanks much.

    If you're unhappy with the product, you should have returned it, plain and simple. Microsoft at the end of the day should have given the manufacturers the headset adapters way more in advance so that proper testing could have occurred. Heck, Microsoft should have had the adapters ready prior to the official launch of the Xbox One so that the accessory manufacturers could have had enough time to test their products.

    All headsets have had issues, not just the Polks (which is obvious with the many many headset adapter and controller firmware updates Microsoft has been releasing to try and rectify the problems). Are Polks the only ones having mic issues, sure. Has Polk offered up a solution in the meantime so that people can continue on with their gaming, yes. If you don't like it, leave.
  • shepx2
    shepx2 Posts: 646
    edited April 2014
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    Zeros wrote: »
    Holger, you aren't possibly related to a guy from Australia, are you?

    I LOL'd! :-D
  • Holger
    Holger Posts: 10
    edited April 2014
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    Doesn't let me edit so keep it!
  • Blankman
    Blankman Posts: 51
    edited April 2014
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    Holger has many of his "facts" wrong from the very start. First of all, there's a reason why the mics on all three headsets from Turtle Beach function properly. TB was the company that was contracted by MS to produce the headset adapter. Therefore, it's in their best interest to insure that their own headsets as well as the Xbox Stereo headset function properly. In actuality, even those headsets are reporting issues with audio droppout. Conspiracy or oversight, I don't know. However, I do know that other headsets are also experiencing similar issues that Polk has. This leads us into Holger's failure to make any mention of the other headset manufacturers such as Astro Gaming, Razer, SteelSeries, Tritton/Mad Catz, etc. who are also experiencing problems with the adapter/firmware. Are all of those manufacturers also to blame for poor QA and/or design as Holger has accused Polk of? I would think not.

    MS has even released a statement that was reported on numerous credible gaming sites that they are looking into reported headset issues on the Xbox One. To make assumptions on how Polk could logistically offer the Chat Pro mic and ship it to 4 Shot/Melee headset owners in a span of a month goes to show that he has no knowledge of the inner workings of businesses. Polk has been scrambling to come up with an alternative solution to appease customers until MS offers a working firmware update. Three weeks to rollout the temporary solution is not unreasonable since they have partnerships with manufacturing that have been established over their forty years of existence. The situation with the mics is dire, wouldn't you think Polk would have access to the necessary channels to fast track those boom mics?

    This is the first Polk product that I've ever purchased, so I'm the furthest from a fanboy. I can say that I have enough common sense to recognize that this is not a problem of Polk, Astro Gaming, Razer, SteelSeries, Mad Catz, etc. This is clearly an MS issue because there are way too many incidences to be coincidental. Meanwhile, the affected headset manufacturers are at the mercy of MS since they will not respond further on the firmware patch status. Then again, why would they add more cannon fodder for Sony fanboys to slam the XB1 with?
  • sframsden3
    sframsden3 Posts: 52
    edited April 2014
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    Blankman wrote: »
    Holger has many of his "facts" wrong from the very start. First of all, there's a reason why the mics on all three headsets from Turtle Beach function properly. TB was the company that was contracted by MS to produce the headset adapter. Therefore, it's in their best interest to insure that their own headsets as well as the Xbox Stereo headset function properly. In actuality, even those headsets are reporting issues with audio droppout. Conspiracy or oversight, I don't know. However, I do know that other headsets are also experiencing similar issues that Polk has. This leads us into Holger's failure to make any mention of the other headset manufacturers such as Astro Gaming, Razer, SteelSeries, Tritton/Mad Catz, etc. who are also experiencing problems with the adapter/firmware. Are all of those manufacturers also to blame for poor QA and/or design as Holger has accused Polk of? I would think not.

    MS has even released a statement that was reported on numerous credible gaming sites that they are looking into reported headset issues on the Xbox One. To make assumptions on how Polk could logistically offer the Chat Pro mic and ship it to 4 Shot/Melee headset owners in a span of a month goes to show that he has no knowledge of the inner workings of businesses. Polk has been scrambling to come up with an alternative solution to appease customers until MS offers a working firmware update. Three weeks to rollout the temporary solution is not unreasonable since they have partnerships with manufacturing that have been established over their forty years of existence. The situation with the mics is dire, wouldn't you think Polk would have access to the necessary channels to fast track those boom mics?

    This is the first Polk product that I've ever purchased, so I'm the furthest from a fanboy. I can say that I have enough common sense to recognize that this is not a problem of Polk, Astro Gaming, Razer, SteelSeries, Mad Catz, etc. This is clearly an MS issue because there are way too many incidences to be coincidental. Meanwhile, the affected headset manufacturers are at the mercy of MS since they will not respond further on the firmware patch status. Then again, why would they add more cannon fodder for Sony fanboys to slam the XB1 with?

    Well said. This is also my first Polk product, but I for one will stand by my purchase as they have provided us with a temporary fix to ty and make us happy while they continue working on the software/firmware side.
  • jason218302
    jason218302 Posts: 2
    edited April 2014
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    My boom mic is crappy it echoes everything to everyones speakers. Polk is now responsible for me getting constantly muted by everyone. Pretty soon there will be no one left to play with because everyone has me muted. This is horrible!! I have done the updates and you know what in the end Polk needs to deliver the product they promised!!! This is flat out BS. You can't tell me testing wasn't done. I don't know maybe i'm doing something wrong with it but I dont think so .. Pretty common setup....Just frustrating....Glad everyone else's works good though.
  • ken brydson
    ken brydson Posts: 8,650
    edited April 2014
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    My boom mic is crappy it echoes everything to everyones speakers. Polk is now responsible for me getting constantly muted by everyone. Pretty soon there will be no one left to play with because everyone has me muted. This is horrible!! I have done the updates and you know what in the end Polk needs to deliver the product they promised!!! This is flat out BS. You can't tell me testing wasn't done.

    Wow, welcome to CP. Way to step on your "D" on your way in the door....
  • Holger
    Holger Posts: 10
    edited April 2014
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    My boom mic is crappy it echoes everything to everyones speakers. Polk is now responsible for me getting constantly muted by everyone. Pretty soon there will be no one left to play with because everyone has me muted. This is horrible!! I have done the updates and you know what in the end Polk needs to deliver the product they promised!!! This is flat out BS. You can't tell me testing wasn't done. I don't know maybe i'm doing something wrong with it but I dont think so .. Pretty common setup....Just frustrating....Glad everyone else's works good though.

    Same with my headset. Got a call today from a friend at Futureshop to bring my headset for an exchange. They taking them off the shelf because of the microphone issue until a fix is available. I got my Turtle Beach XO 7 and they work out of the box. Sound is better too. For me like a couple other customers who exchanged the 4 Shot with Turtle Beach headsets at Futureshop a learning process. Stay with companies they know what they do.

    And for everybody else who thinks I got something wrong. Please check out the POLK videos were POLK is proud to be teaming up with Microsoft to produce a Xbox ONE headset. BTW: Microsoft did ask POLK and Turtle Beach to make headsets. I mean the videos are online all over the place. Have fun with your POLK 4 Shot (gaming?) headsets.
  • [Deleted User]
    [Deleted User] Posts: 7,658
    edited April 2014
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    Hello,
    Just a reminder if there is a problem with the volume of the microphone versus the game check to see where you have the game/chat mix set? The buttons on the left of the headphone adaptor control the mix between game and chat volumes. If you turn up the chat volume the game volume goes down.
    If the chat volume is too high you'll have an imbalance.
    Regards, Ken
  • eXpon3nt
    eXpon3nt Posts: 1
    edited April 2014
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    Is there a time frame on how long it takes from registration of your 4 Shots to when the free boom mic is shipped? I had no idea about this update until today when I went to register my headset.

    I am hoping it doesn't take too long to receive the update mic as I am one of many users who has been experiencing technical issues with my mic.
  • broadsword001
    broadsword001 Posts: 10
    edited April 2014
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    sorry i need 10 posts
  • halo71
    halo71 Posts: 4,572
    edited April 2014
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    I've said it before and I will say it again. Polk's first mistake here (imo) was working with Microsoft. Over the years how many MS Operating Systems, updates etc have been released with issues. Anyone remember ME, Vista etc?
    --Gary--
    Onkyo Integra M504, Bottlehead Foreplay III, Denon SACD, Thiel CS2.3, NHT VT-2, VT-3 and Evolution T6, Infinity RSIIIa, SDA1C and a few dozen other speakers around the house I change in and out.
  • Tiremfej
    Tiremfej Posts: 11
    edited April 2014
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    My first Polk anything...I love the sound! I will be buying more Polk products in the future. I never use the mic so when they fix it, they fix it!
  • ash93a
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    Hi Guys, just purchased a Polk Melee headset for my sons Xbox360 for his Christmas present. sound quality is pretty good, but the little pop down mic is not picking up his very well at all, just been doing some googling on this issue and clearly this is a common problem!
    I believe the Polk Chat Pro Mic add on that can improve this situation... but can the Polk Chat Pro Mic be used in conjunction with the Polk Melee and Xbox 360? from what I see it appears it is a add on for when using it with the Xbox One?
    Really need to find a fix for this issue as he has now just gone back to the generic xbox 360 chat headset and the Polk Melee is just sitting on the bench gathering dust!

    Regards
    Adrian