Performance -
With audio gear it is hard to be objective. After all different people like different music and even people that like the same music might like to listen to it in different ways. To make sure that I cover the audio products that we get here at DecryptedTech I like to have more than one opinion. Usually I gather 5 other people to listen to different audio types (gaming, movies, MP3 and CD-Audio). I then ask for a rating of one to five with one being the worst and 5 being the best for each category. As an added item I also ask for a single word to describe the audio quality. I then follow up with my personal feelings and observations. While the Kuven Pro 5.1 is primarily a gaming headset we will still be seeing how it performs while listening to music and the audio from movies.
Music (MP3 and CD-Audio) -
For Music I have a few favorite tracks that I like to use. These are not always other people’s favorites but they serve as a baseline and have some impressive audio features to them that can distinguish between good audio and bad. One of them is Stevie Ray Vaughn’s rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing. It is an amazing track. Others are A Day in the Life by the Beetles, Are you Experienced by Jimi Hendrix, and Cage the Elephant’s Ain’t no Rest for the Wicked. To this listing we added some jazz, funk, and of course Reggae (Bob Marley’s Stir it Up of course).The numbers for this along with their corresponding one word comments are below.
The Kuven Pro 5.1 had a fairly full sound to it. There was an odd digital feel, but it was so bad that it took away from the overall experience. The bass was also well done thanks to the “sub-woofer” in each ear cup. There was a slight “digital” feel to the audio, but it was certainly not a deal breaker.
Gaming -
So for this test we did something a little different. As we have mentioned (and you can see from the box) these are meant for portable personal media players like the iPhone, iPad iPod and even other tablets. We decided that in addition to our normal gaming tests with a few choice PC games we would also throw in a couple of games on our Note 4 just to see how good the audio reproduction is there.
As you might imagine the Kuven Pro 5.1 did must better at gaming than it did at simple audio reproduction. This is what it was designed for and does an excellent job at pushing the sound. You may want to adjust the different channels to your tastes, but even out of the box things are pretty spot on for most games. Even the thump of large caliber weapons (think Call of Duty).
Movies/Video -
Movies was an easy one also, I have several Blu-ray titles that are great for this including Pirates of the Caribbean. So I loaded up this title and then dropped in a couple of other movies that have good surround effects. The numbers and words are shown below.
The gaming focus of the Kuven Pro 5.1 lends to great performance when watching movies. The Blu-ray titles that we used for testing all came through sounding great. There was more than enough separation in the channels to make the surround work well. You do not get room shaking bass for explosions, but it had enough force to fool your ears into feeling the rumble when they hit.
Comfort -
When I pulled the Kuven Pro from the box my first thought was that this would not be a comfortable headset to wear. It felt heavy and out of balance and looking at the ear cups had me worried about pressure on my ears. However, it is surprisingly comfortable even after extended usage. The deep ear cups seemed to decrease the amount of pressure on the sides of my head while maintaining a snug fit. They also added to the audio experience by allowing for more room (air) inside for the sound to work with.
