A "weirdly good" & very tuneable headset setup
A "weirdly good" & very tuneable headset setup
TLDR: The Corsair Virtuoso Pro is good and becomes pretty impressive with a bit of EQ. If you need a microphone, I think this is pretty ideal, especially for the price. And even without the need for a (btw. detachable) mic it's still pretty good. Somehow.
About two months ago, I stumbled across a post on a German blog about Corsair Gaming, Inc's Virtuoso Pro. A gamer headset from a gamer company for gamers. Please excuse my snark, but that raises just about every red flag I can think of.
But somehow, it did pretty good in Igors measurements. Rtings also measured it and it still did well, but other than those two, there's just not a lot of good information on the thing.
About three weeks later it got a bit cheaper (130,-€, instead of the usual ~160,-€. It was 110,-€ last year too). Not exactly cheap, but fine for the assumed performance, and the included microphone solved a problem with my current setup.
By now, I've been running it for a month… and it's good. Not only is it good out of the box, it takes well to EQing. Which, for me, is the absolute kicker and opened the doors to combining it with pretty a cheap Fiio JA11 / JCally JM12 with flashed firmware as they come with built-in PEQ via Web-USB interface (the app is a burning pile of trash btw.) and microphone pass-through, just a lack in power. But the Virtuoso Pros are pretty sensitive anyway making it a pretty perfect match.
I'm currently running them with this EQ:
Preamp: -5.7 db
Filter 1: ON PK Fc 20 Hz Gain 4.8 dB Q 0.6
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 150 Hz Gain -4 dB Q 0.8
Filter 3: ON PK Fc 1500 Hz Gain 2.9 dB Q 2.3
Filter 4: ON PK Fc 2700 Hz Gain -2.5 dB Q 2.8
Filter 5: ON PK Fc 3900 Hz Gain 6 dB Q 1.8
Here's my reasoning for this, if you are interested.
Imo, there are just two problems, both having to do with microphonics:
Corsair somehow thought a nylon sleeved cable was a good idea. Visually, I agree. Microphonically, it's terrible. I don't have a huge problem with it, but both the mic and the ear cups easily pick up any noise that comes with any movement of the cable on pretty much any surface. This is stupid. Secondly, unless you're a horse, the microphone has to be bent into an L shape. The arm is just too long and the microphone is prone to plosives. Not a good combination - even if the L-bend makes it easy to fix.
Other than that; I'd say they are pretty good headphones… with a microphone! Which is rather perfect for my use-case, where I switch from PC-gaming plus voice chat to my phone plus music and mix and match tasks as they come.
Edit: words & phrasing