I recently bought a Corsair HS55 Wireless Headset. They stated it supports Dolby 7.1, IF you use the iCue software, which doesn’t work on Linux.

Using pavucontrol, I can change the profile between Analog Stereo Output, Digital Stereo (IEC958) Output and Digital Surround 5.1 (IEC958/AC3) Output, but the Analog one is the only one that works. The other 2 just results in broken audio. There’s not even a 7.1 option.

I don’t have high hope about this, and I expected it to not work when I bought it, but it would be nice if anyone has some ideas.

  • jrgdEnglish
    1·
    22 days ago

    The headphones you have don’t have any actual surround sound capabilities. The only thing they do is have a software driver that maps a set of channels from 7.1 surround sound to the binaural sound mapping of the headphones.

    The pipewire sound server can do the same thing as iCue with filter chains and specific plugins. See this post for some pointers and guidance if you wish to set it up for yourself.

    Do note that unless you have content built with actual 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound, there won’t be much actual benefit to using virtual surround sound on headphones in the first place.