The virtual 7.1 that is supported via Hera is broken out of the box, and does not work well at all. When you enable virtual 7.1 in Hera, it shows all of the 7.1 speakers sitting together in the upper far left – and moving them to the correct location helps some, but no matter where you move them, it never sounds quite right. I tried fixing them to what I thought was correct, and it still had some speaker, either left or right, a bit too loud.

As much as it pains me to say this, with the drivers in their current state, the virtual 7.1 surround sound feature, as listed, borders on false advertising.

Thankfully, all is not lost. Since the drivers are beyond worthless (other than to set the color; even that doesn't work right, but you can pause the color cycle to pick a color and never touch them again) I would just not install it at all. Windows 10 has built-in virtual surround sound support in the form of Windows Sonic for Headphones, or if you buy the upgrade, Dolby Atmos for Headphones. I bought the upgrade, and these sound fantastic with Dolby Atmos, since the frequency response of these is so good out of the box.

If you do want equalization, again, Hera is completely broken. When I tried to adjust it, even slightly, they went from sounding great, to something clearly being wrong. I don't know what it is, but just don't touch Hera if you use these headphones. You can have it installed; just don't touch anything. What I found instead is a third party, open source app called Equalizer APO. This thing not only works great, but it's a solution for another common problem with these (and other) USB headphones.

Many USB headphones, these included, are too loud out of the box, or with the Hera drivers installed. You literally can go deaf with the volume set above 10 (out of 100). It's crazy, and frustrating when you find that between 2 and 8 is the only usable part of the volume dial.

Thankfully, Equalizer APO lets you set a preamp level, which you can turn down to between -9 and -12, and get a perfectly usable volume knob. It's annoying when you have to turn to third party programs to fix problems like this, but it does work – and the equalizer it offers is much better than Hera anyway.

On the plus side, the inline controller and vibration features are really neat, and implemented well; even better here than on the Hebe M1. There is a clearly marked volume up/down button, a clearly marked microphone mute button (with matching blue or red LED), and a vibration switch. You can set it to off, or two levels of on, which adds a mild, but not altogether bad, bass boost + headphone vibration. On high I feel like it's a bit too overpowering, but on low, it's just right. It turns on the feature so that you can feel blasts (and bass guitars, as it were), while still not impacting audio clarity so much as to get in the way. It's fun, and I like it. The only thing missing from the inline remote is a way to dim the lights; you have to rely on the Hera software for that.

The Gamdias Hephaestus P1 RGB Virtual 7.1 Surround Sound Gaming Headset is, in the most important ways, the best headset I have reviewed to date. The build quality is excellent, and the sound is clean, reasonably clear, and has an excellent frequency response balance that many headphones get totally wrong. It is a bit short on clarity compared to my audiophile headphones, but that is not at all surprising or expected – they cost a lot more, too. The virtual surround features, or pretty much anything else that requires Hera, is unfortunately in a very bad place. Software can be fixed, but only time will tell if they resolve the issues. If Gamdias' other similar looking model, the Hephaestus E1, sounds just as good as this on an analog level, then I would probably recommend that one instead, as you can just use your sound card or any device – unless you really like the vibration, in which case, get this. Regardless, it's a great headset where it really counts, sound quality, so I recommend it.