Roccat Kave Headset

Performance and Comfort
There are of course no specific tests we can perform for reviewing a headset and so it does all come down to my opinions about this product. I did however use this product for quite a length of time while going about it with a fairly typical amount and type of computer use. For instance, I watched a few films with full surround sound as well as playing a few of the latest games with the audio quality turned up to max. I also used this device on several different occasions and via several different mediums to chat to friends over Skype, MSN, Google Talk and Mumble.

From a standard sound quality point of view, quite frankly put the performances of these are very very impressive. They are not ‘tinny’ which you get with the cheaper headsets and I couldn’t get them to distort even with the volume turned right up – which was a dangerously loud level and I would not recommend doing this while wearing the headset. It must be noted that it says in the technical specifications that the noise output is 114 dB which is quite a lot in itself but this reading was most probably taken at a set distance away from the headset meaning they are louder than this when you are wearing them.

The surround sound quality is quite exceptional and it does feel very realistic when compared with a cinematic experience. They don’t quite feel like you are fully immersed in the sound even though it is full surround sound, this is because it feels like you are wearing a headset at all times – they don’t merge into the background. On a slightly different note the bass is quite impressive for a headset giving even the low frequency with a nice bit of fire power although it could have a touch more kick in the game setting. However the quality is well worth it.

That said they are rather large. I’m not going to say they are uncomfortable as even after several hours of use they felt fine but I am going to say that they felt weird to wear. Unless you are used to wearing large ear defenders then you are probably not used to the size of these things. They fit your ears/head well but are fairly heavy and bulky meaning it feels weird when you rotate your head. The Roccat Kave will also take up a large space on your desk while you are not using them – this being the main annoyance I found with them –if they were wireless it might be a different story.

There are a few features which are really useful, for instance the microphone mute feature which works very well especially as you have the LED on the microphone boom stick telling you if the microphone is activated or not. Although while on the topic of the microphone. On occasion, I have gone to rotate the microphone and it has fallen out into my hand. This in itself isn’t the worst of things as you can just push it back in fairly easily as it can be easily removed which is a good feature. I just feel it falls out a bit too easily.

The volume and mute controls on the desk remote are quite useful however if you are going to use desktop speakers as well then you won’t like the fact that you have no independent volume control for the headset. Especially if you mute the headset it mutes your whole computer. This for me was only rarely useful and more often annoying. Also it is a shame that when you are using normal audio output from say iTunes then it only goes through the front channel of the equalizer and so you are not able to control the bass level of the music you are listening to. Most speakers have this feature and I don’t see why they couldn’t have split the audio into its constituent parts giving you full control over the music you listen to and making the equalizer really useful.