So...Can someone explain this black magic to me?
I wanted to use headphones/3D Audio with Demon's Souls. The simplest option for me to use is my pair of Bose 700s which are great general purpose headphones, by plugging them into the controller. However they do not sound as good in wired mode as they do wireless for various reasons. Unfortunately the PS5 still does not support wireless bluetooth headsets, so I can't use them in wireless mode in the PS5. They sounded decent in wired mode, but I looked over at my old pair of Gen1 Astro A50s and thought about giving them a try.
I hadn't used them in years but as I examined them I remembered there were two cables needed to use them with the PS4: the USB cable to power the base station, and the optical cable to transmit audio to the base station. I realized there was no optical port in the PS5, so I figured I was screwed. I see that Astro made an HDMI-optical splitter just for the PS5 and XSX which have both removed the optical port (however this paired with firmware for Gen3 and Gen4 A50s, which made me think that there was definitely no chance I was getting any use out of my old headphones). But just for fun I tried powering the base station with a USB-microUSB cable I had in my PS3. And somehow I turned on the headphones and they work. Surround Sound, game/voice mixer, everything.
This makes no sense to me - somehow the PS5 is transmitting audio and power through the USB-port, and I hope to God this is not some kind of mistake that Sony will patch later - I am getting use out of 6 year old headphones that I thought were long left to collect dust.