Corsair ST100 Stand

WHY ON EARTH do we have this thing in? I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t already own a headphone stand. I have one at home, a cheap $20 aluminum affair, an impulse buy from Amazon to complement the custom desk I built in 2016. I love my audio, and as I’ve got a sweet pair of Beyerdynamic DT 1770 Pros to cushion sound waves around my rather small earlobes, I needed something to store them on. Thus, the stand. There’s a whole plethora of them out there, too: plastic ones, wooden ones, ones you attach to the underside of your desk, even ones baked into screens and cases. If you can think of it, some odd-named third-party company has probably made it. It’s a big market, and I’m surprised the mainstream peripheral manufacturers haven’t jumped into it sooner.

So, let’s talk about the ST100. What’s so special that it deserves the $60 price tag? Well, it’s a Corsair product, so there’s RGB. But possibly slightly more impressive is the inclusion of a tiny USB DAC, embedded into the undercarriage. Enabling a modicum of digital audio, it sounds OK. It also has support for digitally synthesized 7.1 surround sound, as well, but as we’ve come to expect from those kind of systems, that’s still pretty crappy.

Ultimately, it’s a fairly expensive, light-up, aluminum USB hub and audio pass-through, which you can also just happen to put your headphones on. Is it worth it? I’m not convinced…. –ZS $60, www.corsair.com