The musical side of HS80 RGB Wireless
The musical side of HS80 RGB Wireless
The HS80 RGB Wireless performs very well in music, especially considering that it’s a gaming headset. With a balanced EQ setting in Corsair’s iCUE software, the headset provided a strong and dynamic bass, clear vocals, and good sound reproduction. It’s best to:
- Select pure direct mode
- or add a new profile and manually configure the equalizer, and then
- Save it as the default profile
As for the testing suite, we used the following songs:
- Eric Clapton - Tears In Heaven
- Guns N' Roses - Welcome to the Jungle
- Limp Bizkit – Boiler
- Missy Elliott - Get Ur Freak On
We listened to all these tracks in lossless FLAC or played them on Spotify (320 kbps), and, as you can see, we covered a variety of genres. The HS80 RGB Wireless makes the bass sound very rich. The instruments sound natural, and vocals are represented correctly. We got the impression that the Dolby Atmos enabling makes the sound better. Low-end instruments like the bass guitar and drums were reproduced with good depth and fullness. Bass drum reproduction is clear. The mid-range is a bit too warm by default. The soundstage and resolution are great. Vocals, acoustic and electric guitars, and pianos came through clearly. Resonance felt rather natural. Midrange vocals had enough warmth. The upper-end had a slight issue with the treble. It felt rather sharp at times, but high-hat clashes and higher-range instruments were clear enough. The Corsair Gaming HS80 RGB Wireless has a V-shaped characteristic (very common for gaming headsets), with more than sufficient bass and treble combined with a lesser midrange. Audiophiles will prefer a more neutral sound, but you are not the target for this headset if you are one. The frequency response is rather standard, so no extra points for that.
Overall, the HS80 RGB Wireless provided a sound of more than enough quality; there’s a rather wide musical spectrum. The sound stage and the headset’s capabilities were good, with enough depth and direction. The HS80 RGB Wireless is tuned to a very nice balance. You receive here dynamic bass, clear voices. Summing it up – there’s no real reason to complain here, especially considering that this is a gaming headset and not a product for audiophiles.
