This is bizarre. You won't play VR because the headphones are bad and there are simple mods out there to attach headphones to the Rift S that takes less than 20 minutes and only costs about £15. You would have sound as good, if not better, than the OG Rift.
Also, have you used the Rift S since the 1.38.1 update? It's a night and day difference. If the sound still sucks, you must be wearing the headset so the straps are a long way from the ears. Try setting the straps lower on your head. You will have a bit more of a nose gap, but the sound is way better.
Try the PTC 1.39 update, it further improves the audio.
Yeah I know its bizzare. I think its just pure laziness. That one simply act of plugging in the short headphone cable, enabling pass through, and then plugging in the headphones turns into -> finding the cable -> trying to find headphones which have been moved upstairs -> coming back downstairs, then putting back on the headset and connecting the headphones.. blahblah.
Audio is really really really important to me in all forms of medium. I hope Oculus next gen somehow manage to mimic the AKG 712 sound stage in some speaker type form like Valve have managed to do.
Yeah, I should really just do a simple mod for it. Can you reccomend me any £15 mods please which will give me good audio quality?
Although I appreciate the sound might have improved, by design its just very obvious the sound is going to be awful for its entire lifespan. I need at least CV1 level audio quality. I thought that was actually the bottom line of premium for audio quality in VR.