Roccat kave

The Roccat Kave Solid 5.1 has real 5.1 sound with four speakers on each ear cup that are at a 12 degree angle. This headset is very accurate that it gives a huge hint to gamers to pinpoint enemies in  first person shooter games.

The Roccat Kave inthe original box.

When you open the headset inside there will be the headset itself with a desktop remote controller and the user manual with the driver disk.

The headset with the desktop controller in the middle.

User manual,Quick installation guide and the software CD.

Before you buy this headphones unless you have a sound card one should check if the motherboard supports 8-Channel sound. If not you will have to buy a seperate sound card that can be found here. 

After unboxing everything you will see that the pins are all colour coded and that they are protected by a piece of plastic that is very easy to remove. 

Colour coded jacks with USB

Everything is color coded for easy to connect.

Connecting the jacks is very simple, if the coloured jack is Green this will need to be connected to the Green port at the back of the system. The Green colour coded jack means that it will emit sound to the front speakers, the Black for the side speakers, the Yellow/Orange for the centre/subwoofer and the Pink pin is used by the microphone.

After connecting all the color coded pins in the correct slot there is the USB that needs to be connected to a USB slot. The USB is used to power the headset and nothing else.

When everything is connected properly you can switch on the system and the headset will light up blue from the microphone end, the headset itself and  from the desktop controller. After it boots one would think to install the drivers next but with this type of headphones you don't need to. The Roccat Kave is designed to work with your operating system without the need to download/install extra softwares. So instead of installing the drivers one should go to sound card options and set the Speaker Configuration as 5.1 Speakers. I would suggest to run a test to check that everything is working properly before you start enjoying them.

Realtek HD Audio Manager settings.

Using/setting up the desktop controller.

Desktop Controller

Top left- Blue led, on the left there is the sound controller circle and in the middle of that the mute button. Moving to the right we can see the sliders and the 2 profiles.

The desktop controller is very simple to operate. Flipping it on the back there is nothing else than just a sticker stating company details. On the side one can see a button that this is used to MUTE the microphone when needed. The button is operated by one finger press and another press to UNMUTE the microphone, very simple. Next on the front one can see a rotatable circle that is used to reduce/increase the sound that is generated by the headset.

Side view- Mic Mute on the left and on the right there is a tip from where you can open the  plastic cover.

 In the middle of the sound  controller there is a button that is quite unnoticeable that MUTE's the sound of the headset and it is operated again by a finger press. The blue light is a meaning that the headset is powered 'ON' and flickers when you mute the headset from the middle button. Very nicely designed hidden sound controls can be found by opening the plastic cover and underneath you will find 4 sliders to maximize the user preferences of sound. Underneath the sliders there are 2 profiles that are all ready factory programmed to operate as 'GAME' profile and 'MOVIE' profile. To set up the sliders all you have to do is slide slightly the rubbery part to the user preferences and one can hear the difference of the sound immediately.