Page 5 - Features and Benefits Continues
The earcups on the 1500 are also big and padded with quite a bit of adjustment for comfort. I found the Vengeance 1500 to be a fairly tight fit, and my head is not big at all. Despite being sealed-back headphones, they dont offer very much attenuation of external noise like the ASUS Vulcan ANC do, but they do offer a more than open-back headphones like the AKG K701 or Grado. The Vengeance 1500 also do not fold up like the HS1 could.
The Vengeance 1500 also come with a much-more-than-adequate 3.8 meter braided, protected, cord. If you dont have a lot of headphones on your desk, it wont be a problem. But, it quickly became a tangle when I was swapping out headphones for testing. The Vengeance 1100 has a refreshingly short cable of 1.8 meters. The Vengeance 1100s USB dongle isnt braided, however. Minor detail.
The headband on the 1500 is much the same as the HS1, big and padded, but with little extra touches like the blue thread sewing.
We do have a slight aversion to the USB chips in most headsets. We think they hurt sound more than they should, but Corsair knows this and is using higher quality USB chips in their headsets. The Vengeance 1500 headset uses the same style of USB puck as the HS1, which is good, because we liked the USB puck on the HS1. We weren't able to confirm the chipset in the V1500's USB puck, but we assume it's the same because the C-Media CM6302 is the only chipset that supports Dolby Digital.
The good news is that the C-Media CM6302 is a pretty potent audio chip, up to 16-bit, in 44.1 KHz or 48 KHz sample rates, DAC for output, and 16-bit, 44.1 KHz and 48 KHz ADC (analog-to-digital conversion) for the microphone. The chip also integrates a DSP that enables Xear 3D and Dolby® Digital technologies. Windows reports 24-bit 96 KHz playback (USB audio spec is generally capped at 16-bit/48 KHz) ability, so it is surely using SRC (Sample Rate Conversion) to achieve that.
I cant think of any recent Corsair products that didnt like a camera. The Vengeance 1500 and 1100 are very stylish, simple, even elegant in a minimalist sort of way. If they could also do a Storm Trooper edition of the Vengeance 1500 edition to match the 600T case it would be awesome. It would be gonzo nuts if Corsair would do that.
That just about covers the features of the Vengeance 1500 and 1100, now lets dig a little deeper into the drivers and sound. Next page please!
