Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless SE feedback

Hello there,

 

i just created an account, because i tried the Virtuoso as a new Headset and had a few thoughts as feedback.

 

My main Feedback is mostly about the design/build of several parts of this, overall, awesome headset.

I know there has been a lot of feedback from Reviewers already, but the journalistic Approach all seem to miss the parts that are important (to me).

 

Lets start:

 

Sound:

 

Experience:

Coming from an Sennheiser headset (PC350 - so not the latest) i was used to a very good out of the box performance, with a well balanced sound.

Since i read a lot of reviews on this headset, i knew i had to tune it a little.

My first impression (out of the box) was a really flat sound, very muddled. Especially while listening to Videos/Music.

After tuning it a little, it is now close to what i expect, but i am not an audiophile.

 

Suggestion for improvement:

Even though you trust your users to tune the EQ Settings themselves, it think the out of the box Performance could have been a little better tuned already.

Not everyone knows how to set up their EQ to the perfect sound and i am one of those people - thankfully i had guidelines from reviewers.

- oob performance/tuning

 

 

Microphone:

 

Annotaion: No problems at all, no suggestions regarding sound etc. - But it is already widely praised for a wireless headset. What i can note is, that this thing almost always sits in my periphial vision, which is really distracting.

 

 

Software/iCue/RGB:

 

Experience:

Quite smooth, but i had a little 'trouble' finding most of the important settings. That was, because all the settings for my AiO had to be done within the profiles and not in the 'settings' menu.

I liked the options for several EQ Profiles though.

 

Suggestion for improvement:

Add the nonessential Settings, especially for the LEDs to the Profiles and seperate it from other connected devices. If not possible, give a hint were to find the searched setting - or link them together (Popups/Infoblocks).

 

 

Build/Design/Comfort:

This part was the intention to do this 'review'/feedback.

The Big points for me are:

- clamping-force

- Weight distribution

- Ear-Cup-Foam

- Microphone-Attachment

- Ear-Cup-Size

 

The points, clamping-force, weight-distribution and Ear-Cup-Foam belong together and are my main Issue for the comfort.

 

Experience:

Buildquality is very good, i have no problems with any part - everything seems to be as intended, this is a plus. Battery-life is as expected - a full charge was good for at least 12 hours (after that i charged it while wearing).

Connectivity is also excellent, no issues whatsoever.

 

Widely praised as the best wireless headset, especially for gamers. This had me a little rattled, since wearing-comfort did not hold up, for me.

 

As for the current situation, i am working completely from home - so i have to wear headphones all day (at least 8 hours + 4-8 hours private). My experience wearing this headset worsens over the duration of continuously wearing this device.

A lot of reviews described that ears get very warm, but my experience so far is okay. Yes, they get a little warmer, but it is not umcomfortable.

The issue is weight distribution, over the duration of wearing the Virtuoso the pressure on the top of my head increases significantly - to the point where i have to take them off. Otherwise i would get a headache. I suspect that the clamping-force of the earcups decreases over time, which puts more pressure on the head.

 

This led me to ideas on how to improve this headset.

 

As additional information, i think i have fairly regular head and i don't wear glases:

- circumference: ~610mm (measured over the ears around the head)

- ear-to-ear-diameter: ~190/200mm (width of head)

- Top-to-auricle ~135mm (Top of the head to the top of the auricle)

 

Suggestion for improvement:

 

Alright, what would improve the wearing-comfort would be an 'attack' on three fronts - by adjusting these three things, i think the experience can get to another, better, level.

Weight distribution is the big issue here, the first thing that comes to mind is adressing the headband:

- Contactarea: for my head it would be better if the contactarea is improved further. Right now it is around 55mm, if this could be increased to 60/65mm it would help

- Padding/Cushion: i think it is around ~5mm thick on the headside? that is a bit to small.

 

The biggest issue with weight distribution might be the clamping force of the ear-cups.

As said before, i suspect that the existing clamping force (which is also not that great) deteriorates over time wearing it. The 'fix'/adjustment for this includes, to have a look at the ear-cup cushions.

The cushions are veeeery soft, which is very comfortable on your head. But, this way the ear-cups sit a little loose and i always have the feeling that they slip off and that my ears do not sit correctly inside the headphones.

I think a mix out of the current soft material on the contactside with the head and a more rigid foam on the driver side would give a better fit.

 

With this, some people might have an issue with fitting their ear completely in the cups, increasing the innerdiameter by 5mm could solve this.

Disclaimer: i am aware, that the comfort for people with glases might differ with harder cushions.

 

This means:

- increase the clamping force on the headset

- change the ear-cushions to a 50% ridig foam and 50% current cushion

- increase of the inner diameter of the earcups by 5mm

 

An increased clamping force, with a bit sturdier cushions would release stress from the top of the head and spread the weight better.

 

 

Little improvements along the way:

 

- Microphone: Magnetic attach&detach

 

As mentioned above, it is almost always in my periphial field. Bending it helps, but sometimes i would love to just take it off - while wearing the headset.

If you prepare a revision, i suggest that a magnetic method to attach/detach the microphone is used. With a strong magnet, there should be no issue with accidentally detaching it. Maybe a locking mechanism as a bonus is possible.

I obviously have no clue if that impacts performance/transmission.

 

 

- Buttons: more to the bottom

 

The volume-wheel and the other buttons could use a move more to the bottom of the cups. I think most people will accidentally scroll on the volume while taking them off. Most people will probably set their thumb in this area for taking if off.

 

 

- 90°/60° USB-C Cable

 

I know USB-C Cables/Connectors are very expensive to produce. If you use the cable while wearing this headset, it is a little distracting that it potentially rubs on your shoulder.

 

 

i think...thats it.. :)

I have no hope that these suggestions come through to the design&productplanning team - but if they do, it would make me really happy to see changes, since this is overall a very good wireless headset.

 

Kind regards

Edited April 3, 2020 by villaiN

I've also found the same issues regarding iCue and the sound quality of the headset greatly diminishing if either iCue is on (surround off, EQ off; everything off) or have the Corsair-supplied drivers installed. Hissing noise was my main concern.

 

I have iCue set to not start with windows now and have recently also turned off (set to manual start) the Corsair services in services.msc. Hoping that disabling the Corsair LLA (stands for Low Latency Audio perhaps?) service will solve the wonky audio stutter that only happens occasionally at low- to moderate volume levels and usually involving VOIP.

 

These are not user friendly solutions so I hope for Corsair's sake that they burn the software and drivers and start over. I can not recommend this headset to anyone at the moment, despite the actual hardware being good.

 

Couple more tips for people who already own the headset: Do not let the Corsair wireless dongle share USB-hub/controller with Logitech wireless dongles (especially "Lightspeed" ones). I think their typical high polling rate disturbs the headset dongle and can in worst case result in your microphone not working or earphone audio quality go very bad. If you want an EQ without running iCue I can recommend installing Equalizer APO and it's front-end "Peace".

I created this account just to say that the crackling issue is such a letdown

i was so eager to receive this headset and for it's pricetag to suffer such a defect makes me so sad.

i tried almost everything i'm currently sticking with the "unistall all corsair drivers/devices and iCUE then plug the headset and let windows install drivers" but i've met some crackling noise while watching a stream which didn't happen before ( it was only limited to games with iCUE) but it's way less frequent.

Still i really hope there will be a fix since a return isn't possible during these complicated times...

Okay second post because i got some information,

 

i encountered 2 issues :

- Crackling sound, headphones stopping working for 3-4 seconds this was characterized with the dongle's led blinking red.

- solid white dongle led, headphones working flawlessly but not being recognized on iCUE

 

 

so this is definitely a software issue because the moment i turned on and off the headphones, it got detected into iCUE again but the led was back to red blinking.

 

i'm still experimenting with it in hope of hopefully fixing it.

Crackling sound finally arrived. Thanks Corsair. How long does it take to fix? It is 100% software related. Thanks.

This headset had a very rocky start

 

I bought this for high fidelity sound and the plus was the surround. the buildquality.

 

Frankly i can't stress this enough but the weight is absolute torture.. there is just no better way to describe it, I own it for a few months now, i guess half a year.. I used to be able to keep it on for an hour or 2 , now after 10 minutes the top of my head is screaming in pain. if i look at my scalp it's tomato red.

I've let my girlfriend use it after a few minutes she grabbed her no-brand wireless, half broken headset instead.

 

And to say I was a fan of corsair products

• Corsair T2
  
• Corsair extended mm300
  
• corsair void pro
  
• Corsair k95
  
• glaive rgb (with the well known double click bug, i have never gotten a response on)
  
• glaive pro (flawless)
  
• corsair dark core
  
• and this demon from hell Virtuoso
  

 

It's very sad to say I'm not sure to stay with corsair after this failure of a headset and the glaive issue i was already dissapointed before, and they just release a pro version instead with the problems fixed. but hell i did buy that pro model

 

I was verry happy with the void, very good bassrange, high's could be better, but dolby surround is very effective.

 

i just wanted a high fidely wireless headset and then virtuoso came out. i was thrilled..

 

The flat dull sound, hours of tweaking to get a somewhat decent result, no dolby support, terrible 7.1. the pain. the money spend on it, i feel betrayed.

 

if the sound would be WOW, which the price and the product is claiming. maybe i would have just used it for music. but this doesn't sound like it's anywhere near a decent range

Edited April 7, 2020 by DX3M

I've provided your feedback about the drivers and service being disabled to the team. Just to verify, these resolved static in all applications?

 

The feedback about multiple dongles from different manufacturers is some good insight. I'm not sure of all the details for our testing, but I've made team aware of this as well if it's not already apart of it.

 

Thanks for forwarding. Yeah all kinds of static noise is gone. But what I've done is essentially the same as if one would've uninstalled iCue.

 

I can unfortunately attest to that it still has issues at times. The audio gets really distorted and weird. This is usually when specific and complex sounds are played, say for example a combination of background music and explosive sounds coming from a game. Seems to me maybe the compression algorithm in the dongle finds scenarios where it just can't cope with a complicated bit of audio and it just becomes mush.

 

I will shelf this product for a while and look for a different solution. Maybe in half a year or so I'll come back and see if there is a new firmware or driver.

Edited April 11, 2020 by Wries

I too have unusable wireless operation. After perhaps a minute it starts crackling terribly - then it just cuts out and starts making totally random digital sounding tones. It's terrible. I've tried a bunch of stuff in this forum, nothing works. Very disappointing!

Any news for new drivers??? I use the last icue and is always the same. The bass are flat and i have some creckling in some games.

Can confirm that the only thing that has fixed the static in wireless was uninstalling iCue completely after 2 months of hoping for a fix and getting static at least once an hour. Don't know how the software got so screwed up with this product but will keep an eye for if you guys ever fix it

Can confirm that the only thing that has fixed the static in wireless was uninstalling iCue completely after 2 months of hoping for a fix and getting static at least once an hour. Don't know how the software got so screwed up with this product but will keep an eye for if you guys ever fix it

 

I have a scimitar mouse as well and rely on iCUE to do the profile switching I require. I'd rather lose the headphones than the mouse TBH.

 

RE the bass problems I also have very average bass - much less than I would have hoped for (EQ settings on bass mode etc).

for so many months already , the cracking sound still haven't been fix? How am I suppose to recommend this to my friends?

I find it weird that I've barely had any crackling issues like that with my Virtuoso That I've had since October 2019.

 

The only time I've had issues with my Corsair setup is when I had the default polling rates set on the K70 RGB MK.2 SE and the M65 RGB ELITE which were at 1000Hz/1msec.

 

Once they both were down to 125Hz/8msec, I've never had any issues and honestly, I didn't need to have it maxed out like that since I don't play fast-paced FPS games.

 

Did anyone else try this to see if it fixed their crackling issues?

I find it weird that I've barely had any crackling issues like that with my Virtuoso That I've had since October 2019.

 

The only time I've had issues with my Corsair setup is when I had the default polling rates set on the K70 RGB MK.2 SE and the M65 RGB ELITE which were at 1000Hz/1msec.

 

Once they both were down to 125Hz/8msec, I've never had any issues and honestly, I didn't need to have it maxed out like that since I don't play fast-paced FPS games.

 

Did anyone else try this to see if it fixed their crackling issues?

 

Very interesting. I'll try that! I have mine set to 1ms...

It's been an hour - which is a lot longer than I've been before without the cracking starting. Will update again later.

I find it weird that I've barely had any crackling issues like that with my Virtuoso That I've had since October 2019.

 

The only time I've had issues with my Corsair setup is when I had the default polling rates set on the K70 RGB MK.2 SE and the M65 RGB ELITE which were at 1000Hz/1msec.

 

Once they both were down to 125Hz/8msec, I've never had any issues and honestly, I didn't need to have it maxed out like that since I don't play fast-paced FPS games.

 

Did anyone else try this to see if it fixed their crackling issues?

 

I have dropped my corsair scimitar mouse from 1ms to 2ms and have not had any audio problems all day - whereas before it would occur at most every 30 mins (requiring a power cycle of the headphones. Looking good so far! Cheers.

Thanks for the updates guys. The USB polling information has been provided to our development team so they can look into this if they haven't already. One thing for all of you experiencing crackling issues, can you verify some information:

 

* Is the dongle plugged into a USB hub (ie. ST100) or any other location besides the back of the motherboard?

* Are there any other wireless USB devices plugged into the same USB stack as your Virtuoso dongle?

* If you move the dongle for those devices to a different USB stack, does the audio improve?

 

We are working on some fixes, and as mentioned, each software update goes through rigorous testing which does take time. Even though we test a large number of platforms and configurations, as well as utilizing our BETA team, sometimes it's difficult to replicate the same issue which makes the correction process longer before a fix can be implemented. As soon as we have a fix incorporated a software update, we'll report back with it for you to try.

 

- It's not in a hub and have tried every port on my machine (8700k, ASRock Z370 Taichi Motherboard)

- There other wireless dongles -> a MSFT sculpt ergonomic mouse and keyboard on a single dongle

- The other main peripherals are the Scimitar mouse and a webcam (sometimes plugged in)

Second unit changed in amazon and same problem, charging all night, full charge and in 4 hours critical battery.

Had the crackle return for a bit. Had to cycle the headphones. Continuing to try things.

Will do. Have a keyboard on order, should be here in a couple of days.

PS I use MS Teams heavily - I've not tested much just in games or with music.