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After months of anticipation and hard work, we're thrilled to announce that Bigscreen Beyond Audio Straps are finally here and shipping to customers worldwide!
Shipping Status
We're shipping out Audio Straps from our Los Angeles factory based on original preorder dates, so if you were among the first to place your order, you should be receiving your Audio Strap very soon.
For those who ordered later, don't worry – we're working diligently to get through our backlog and expect to fulfill all existing orders by mid-September. As of the time of writing this post, hundreds of Audio Straps have already shipped to customers and we expect to ship 1,000-2,000 Audio Straps each week.
Designing the Audio Strap
The Bigscreen Beyond Audio Strap is designed for VR enthusiasts who demand the best in both audio quality and comfort.
Whether you're a simulator enthusiast, dancing into the night in a virtual club in VRChat, or shooting headcrabs in a dark hallway in Half-Life: Alyx, we've crafted this strap to elevate your experience.
The Valve Index is often considered the gold standard for audio in a VR headset. Our goal was to not just match this standard, but to exceed it, especially for experiences like watching movies in the Bigscreen app.
We worked hard to minimize the weight of the Audio Strap to complement the lightweight design of the Bigscreen Beyond. We optimized the construction, materials, and speakers to ultimately create a 160-gram Audio Strap that perfectly counterbalances the 127-gram Beyond.
While the off-ear design has its merits – like the immersive feeling that you're not wearing speakers – on-ear speakers that sit closer to your ears give you a fuller, richer sound experience. 
This is especially noticeable in the deep, rumbling bass of action movies or the subtle background music in immersive games. When off-ear speakers are centimeters away from your ear, these lower frequencies are lost leading to a thinner sound overall. While some headsets try to compensate by artificially boosting the bass, we believe in delivering authentic, high-quality audio that stays true to the creator's intent.
We also understand that fit and comfort are as important as (and contribute to) audio quality, especially for extended VR sessions.
Straps with more rigid speaker placement can present slightly degraded audio performance if you're not within an expected range of head shapes and sizes, so we thought of several ways to let our users get fit and speaker placement exactly right for them.
The speaker arms can be adjusted to change the pressure on your ears, allowing users to find their perfect balance between audio quality and comfort. The arm rotates out of the way easily, enabling you to put on or take off the headset in one smooth motion. Additionally, the angle of the speakers relative to your ear is fully adjustable, accommodating the unique positioning of ears on different faces.
The Bigscreen Beyond Audio Strap makes Bigscreen Beyond a complete audio package. Bigscreen Beyond already features what we believe to be one of the best microphones on any VR headset, ensuring your voice comes through clearly in social VR experiences and multiplayer games, and now we think we've followed that up with great sound for our users.
User Feedback
Starting in November 2023 and extending into January this year, we distributed 100 Audio Straps to test users.
Early feedback from testers and customers has been overwhelmingly positive, and informed further design changes we made earlier this year.
VR Flight Sim Guy said that the way the headset cups the back of your head makes the already lightweight headset seem to "float above your face," which is "incredibly comfortable; it's sumptuous!"
VoodooDE VR says it's "totally black" inside his Bigscreen Beyond paired with the Audio Strap, with "not even one pixel of light leakage." We also loved how he demonstrated the stability of the headset on his face:
One of our favorite things to hear about the Audio Strap is when folks like GAMER Z3RO suggest that the Audio Strap should have been available "with the headset to begin with."
That's how we know we built something truly complimentary, that adds to Beyond without compromising on comfort and our design philosophy that "Every Gram Matters."
Thank You for Your Patience
As we discussed in our previous update, while we had initially aimed for a June release, unforeseen delays with a crucial subcomponent pushed our timeline back.
However, we're confident that the wait has been worth it. The extra time allowed us to refine the product further, ensuring that it meets our high standards of quality and performance.
Order Now
Haven't ordered your Audio Strap yet? Now's the perfect time! With production in full swing, we'll soon be caught up on all current orders.
Order your Audio Strap today, and receive it in 4-6 weeks.
If you're reading this and already received one of the first units we shipped out, be sure to check out the Audio Strap setup guide to learn how to adjust it for perfect fit.
We can't wait to hear how the Audio Strap enhances your VR adventures. As always, we appreciate your support and feedback. Join us on the Bigscreen Beyond Discord server to share your experiences and connect with fellow VR enthusiasts.
Stay tuned for more updates!