Installation

The installation process for the HS1 is quite a straight forward one, thanks to some pretty intuitive drivers. Support for all of the most recent Windows versions is there, through from XP to current, and the whole job should be done in a couple of minutes. The driver/control is not a very big file and will not take up a vast amount in the way of system resources to run.

Once everything is installed and up and running, there are a couple of interesting things inside the control panel. Firstly, before that, though, it's vital that Windows be manually switched over to recognize the Corsair headset, otherwise no audio will be heard. Now, once this is done and attention has shifted over to the Corsair control panel, an initial choice must first be made, and that is whether any processing is to be added. Choices are as follows; Dolby Headphone, Pro-logic IIx, and finally 7.1 speaker shifter which also doubles as control over native down mixing of a 7.1 channel audio track.

Without tying ourselves in a knot trying to explain all the many differences, we will give a quick breakdown of what each basically does. Dolby Headphone is your general purpose all round processing button which will be suitable for anything really. Pro-logic IIx has the ability to up mix stereo into surround; pretty self explanatory. Finally, 7.1 speaker shifter allows real time positioning of each speaker in an artificial environment; a little bit trickier to explain, but basically it allows you to dial in your speaker distances relative to your listening position, much like any home theatre receiver.

If you however do not wish to add any processing, there is of course the option to turn off all of it and simply play back a stereo signal. This would be handy for listening to music which has been originally recorded in stereo. The best advice here would be to cycle through the different modes and familiarize yourself with them rather than trying to stick to any rules about what's meant for what.