Corsair HS1 Virtual Surround Sound USB Gaming Headset Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
2,067 words · ~10 min read
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this is a new product or rather new product category from Corsair this is
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from their gaming audio series which until now didn't exist it's the hs1
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which I'm going to go ahead and guess stands for headset one it is their first
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headset and it is a USB gaming headset Corsair is of course a gaming oriented
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company so it stands to reason they would want a gaming headset you can see
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actually here on the front it's got a little duby logo here with a headphone
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on it so that's to indicate that it does feature duby headphone technology so you
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can enjoy multi- chnnel games and movies in a way that ordinary stereo headsets
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can't match that means that this does support 7.1 virtual surround so even
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though it only has two speakers it uses the built-in digital decoder to actually
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convert your USB port to the audio chip
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built in and then take that digital signal and turn it into an analog output
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for your ears okay let's talk a little bit about some of the other points while
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we open up the box cuz that is what I do
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I unbox products and since headsets are a bit of a passion of mine I'm actually
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going to test this one out and I will let you know what I think I'll either do
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it via annotations over top of this unboxing or I will do a separate review
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video but uh I've tinkered around with
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most of the gaming headsets from the key uh gaming peripheral companies and I'm
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very interested to see how this one Stacks up especially because because
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it's the first one that's actually a dedicated USB headset that I have had a
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look at I mean I've used some of the steel series ones that are analog
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headsets with little USB adapters but uh
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yeah never one that's just purely USB so
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it has massive 50 mm drivers which is competitive with some of the other
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high-end headsets on the market right now and it is built for comfort and I
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can already tell you that based on the construction of it right here um I think
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that's pretty much all I wanted to say about what is on the box so why don't we
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go ahead and get started removing it
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from the packaging so first of all at the
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back because it's a digital product and it uses USB I'm going to go ahead and
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assume there's a driver CD in here stop do not return this product to the store
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contact cors our support please disable your antivirus software
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huh there you go disable your antivirus software while you install the product
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and then reenable it apparently their software can be accidentally detected as
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a virus so here's a quick start guide shows you how to put a disc in your
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computer shows you how to use the volume controls and whatnot wow that was it
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that was the whole thing awesome using the software okay
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allows you to enable and configure dby headphone and dby prologic
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2x all right well that's pretty much it oh did I mention throw this away and
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download the latest from the Corsair website mind you this product's so new
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uh there probably aren't any driver updates yet so it may actually be safe
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to use an included uh driver disc for
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the first time ever on lineus Tech
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tips okay wow they're quite heavy which
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uh I guess is both good and bad because heavy usually to me anyway indicates um
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you know some actual materials went into the construction but on the other hand a
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heavy headset is you know there's a fine line cuz you don't want a headset that
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weighs like 30 lb either that would get tiring fast I I'm still trying to figure
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out this box because a professional
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unboxer um so yeah the battery ran out I know this is a common occurrence uh on
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my blog anyway like I was saying though I am a professional unboxer I am having
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quite a bit of difficulty with this box because it doesn't appear to come away
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come away come apart in any straightforward
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Manner and that's making unboxing it a
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bit of a challenge so as far as I can tell there's a little door here okay so
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from there I'm supposed to maybe pull out these cables and then
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what then what indeed maybe this comes
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off no don't want to force
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it uh okay well I'm going to do some so
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I'm doing something I rarely do and I'm just completely destroying the box here
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there seem to be some perforations for you to more easily destroy it but
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they're not even really that helpful it's a very strange box design never
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seen one quite like it so here we are this is the hs1 from Corsair the first
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thing I want you to notice about it and because it's the first thing I notice
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about it is look how puffy the headband
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is it's actually it's actually okay not
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only very thick here you want to come in a little bit closer don't use the zoom
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it's better not to use that um not only is it very thick but you can see there's
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kind of a a very very soft foam like no
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matter how lightly I press on this it easily gives away and it's quite deep as
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well so the hard part of the headband is actually quite deep inside there and it
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feels like that would be very comfortable for extended uh gaming
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periods up at the top is also puffy although that I can't imagine would have
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any effect on on Comfort all right let's have a look at the design of the
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headphones themselves you can see they do fold up so that would be helpful if
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you're packing them up to take to a lan or for some other reason packing them up
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they swivel so they swivel this way okay so
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that will give you some flexibility if your head is shaped kind of like this or
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like this or like this or you know if your head's shaped like this then you'll also be able to wear the hs1 quite
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comfortably indeed these uh these hinges
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right here look very robust so you can see the construction in them there they
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are plastic but you can see they use quite thick plastic pieces in their
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construction and I really can't imagine you'd have much success breaking these
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even if you tried there are many metal elements to these as well which would
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explain the considerable weight to them so this is metal this is metal this
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piece right here oh hard to say cuz it's quite
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cold so it's cold but it sounds like plastic so I'm not really
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sure I'm like 99% sure these are metal
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though okay let me just see so okay you can see
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you've got a boom mic right here so it goes all the way down this
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way and um it's adjustable okay so it's not the first
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time I've seen a design like that but you can tuck it up out of the way just
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like that all right he uses one cord
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okay so it's a lot more convenient than some headsets that do use one cord to
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each earphone and then but rather it has
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one cord and then it goes up through the head piece and then down to the other
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ear all right so why don't I go ahead and put these on and then we can see
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what kind of a fashion statement they are oh those really comfy actually those
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are nice so you got some adjustments in here so if you have kind of a taller
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head wow you can see they're actually very adjustable so even if I had that
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much more like that much more of a tall head
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I'd be able to wear these quite comfortably and uh so yeah I mean I'm
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going to adjust them to more like a smaller head size right there so
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you can see I've gone ahead and adjusted that out a little bit and the ear cups
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are absolutely huge so I don't know if you you can compare it to the size of my
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ears here but it fits over very comfortably even with my earrings on
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hanging down below my ears so it doesn't put any pressure on the earrings which
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is uh actually kind of a a nice thing uh
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based on how much I can hear outside they're fairly open although it's uh
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hard to say 100% for sure because I don't know if I saw any notes on the Box
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about whether these are an open or a closed
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headset ah they noise isolating okay so there are they are going to call these
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closed but I can tell you one thing is
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that the closed headphones I've used in the past that have been more effective
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at isolating noise don't use a foam earpiece but they usually use like a
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fake leather like a pley material and that will cause it to isolate the sound
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a little bit better although one advantage you do get from like a hybrid
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design where it's using a closed ear cup
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but then you've got a little bit of sound leakage here is that you will actually be able to hear people who are
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talking to you in the same room room a little bit better although you will get
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a little bit more sound leakage out from the headphones to the people around you
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so they'll be able to hear what you're listening to uh which should be fine as
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long as it's nothing you know too outlandish okay so you can see that's
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where the mic sits so it's a very comfortable distance from my mouth
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anyway and uh what's nice about it sitting off to the side like this is
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that when I breathe out when I talk it's not going to uh have air brushing past
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the mic and create that whooing noise so it should pick Pi up the sound really
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well because of the distance to my mouth but the fact that it's not sitting right
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in front of it means that it should be a more clear sound so we'll have a look at
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the cord itself it's a braided covered
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sleeved cord very very nice uh very tangle resistant I mean you probably
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can't even tie this in a knot if you try to I mean maybe you could but it would
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come out quite easily even if you did that so that's a pretty good design
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feature and then here we have a mute button audio control These are nice big
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buttons so they should be fairly easy to find should you be concerned about how
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to find them and then last but not least there we go the uh the unique feature of
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these headphones is that they are entirely USB powered entirely USB
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driven so what that means is that you don't even need a sound card to use this
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headset so that means if you have like a laptop with crummy sound and let's face
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it most laptops have crummy onboard sound uh then this is a perfect solution
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because you go ahead and plug it into a USB port and all the Sound Processing is
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done up here so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the hs1 once I have a
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chance to play around with them a little bit I will let you know my Impressions and don't forget to subscribe to Linus
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