How to get good sound from HS1A

Hello, I've been in the market for a set of headphones to replace my Carcharias, and after reading great reviews on the HS1As I plunked the cash down and got a set.

I also bought a X-FI HD to go along with it, as i figured if i'm going balls out on the headphones, might as well do better than realtek.

How wrong I was, I've been using everything i can to get these headphones to sound as good as my Carcharias, There is just zero bass at all. I have the creative Crystalizer maxed, with the fake bass in the control panel maxed as well. AND after that, I have it running into SRS audio essentials, Trubass at 9, speaker size set to 1 and i STILL can't get any balls out of these headphones. Whereas, when i plug my razers in, my head gets blown off. I've also tried breakaway audio enhancer, It just couldn't man up to the challenge.

My X-Fi hd has a headphone amp in it, How much power do i have to feed these things to get some bottom end? I really want them to work, I don't want to RMA these things, I've never had to RMA anything in my 20 years of computing, and i don't want it to be a 70 dollar headset.

Someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Sadly, I regret to inform you that what you are doing wrong is expecting it to sound like something it is not.

Corsair has went out of their way to make this sound even. It does not have massive bass or treble. It has a flat response all the way from the lows to the highs.

Clearly this is not what you wanted, but I honestly have no idea how you could have missed this. They advertise that detail as a selling point. It was one of the reasons I bought the HS1 myself.

I wish I knew how to set this up to work as you desire. But I just do not like heavy bass myself, so I cannot really help.

Perhaps another here will know something better to tell you. Good luck.

I understand, I love the clarity these provide, But there is literally no bass at all.

My Razers are muddy, but there IS bass there. I can't sense these drivers thumping at all, It is all ear bleeding highs. I know there is a way to kick these things, But I can't figure it out.

I might try adding in another headphone amplifier see where that gets me.

One detail that may explain a bit of this is the 250 milliwatts of power the USB version is drawing. I have read about other headsets using as high as a watt of power for the same.

So there is just not enough power in these by default to produce bass intensities high enough to turn your brain to snot. :D

Bear in mind that I am speaking of the USB version. I honestly do not know all the differences between the USB and analog version. The USB version has it's own low power headphone amp built in. But the analog version?

I would love to hear how your progress goes.

I actually have the analog version, And it is being driven by a X-Fi HD soundcard, It has a built in headphone amp.

What I'm wondering is, If i piggyback another headphone amp and drive these things hard, Will the bass come alive?

I am unsure. I would think adding another amp would scramble the output pretty badly.

If you decide to try, please start as low as you can and go easy on increasing it even if it sounds too quiet. A bit of time and patience is worthwhile to save yourself from a pair of blown drivers. Right?

I am convinced that good audio quality can be obtained from these for almost anyone. It just takes a bit of tweaking.

Clearly you are willing to do the effort to get good quality sound, so you will succeed.

And now for comedic relief...

Here I try giving you "Hot" audio. :flamethro

Here I give you a pill that sounds like Uber Bass. :bomb:

It just occurred to me that you indicated you are using these with a card that has a headphone amp. Does that mean it has a separate headphone minijack port? And if so, have you tried using the normal port?

Sometimes the different ports work drastically different from how they should. I am almost certain you have probably tried that first thing, but if not you should.

My X-Fi hd has a headphone amp in it, How much power do i have to feed these things to get some bottom end?

It's not that you're doing something wrong; it's that your are misinformed. The X-Fi Titanium HD does not have a Headphone Amp. It does have a dedicated headphone out in the rear capable of driving up to 330 Ohm headphones. The front panel headphone circuit is limited to 30 Ohm. If you're not using the rear headphone jack try it.

The Xonar Essence STX is the mainstream card with a Headphone Amp at around the same price. It will drive a headphone requiring up to 600 Ohm. There were a lot of reviews around the same time that made the amp mistake on the Titanium HD most likely because Creative specified the Ohm limit on the rear output and said it was dedicated.

If you're talking about the actual X-Fi HD (the USB DAC product) it only has a Phono pre-amp so that you can record straight from a turntable (turntables, for the most part, do not have line level outs).

Having said all of that I wasn't aware that the HS1A had hard requirements for power. They are 32 Ohm headphones which should be fine as most mainstream headphones/sets are in the 24 Ohm to 32 Ohm range.