Setup, Design & Observations
Out the box you instantly get a feel that the little Cross-Kitty (sorry ROCCAT, but they are small and cute) is not only lightweight, but very well made. The materials and finish feel truly superb. Aside from the cable/stop issue on the earcups, there is a good amount of flexibility and strength in places where needed. The volume dial feels smooth and is easy to access at the rear of the left earcup, the adjustment stops click nicely at each notch and the foam earpads are marshmallow soft.
Opening up the Cross to place on our head, we find that there is very light clamping strength, which, in unison with the memory foam earpads, and the lightweight nature of it, we found that ROCCAT have a very comfortable headset here (not to mention that I am generally an on-ear skeptic!). Because they are so light, the clamping force is perfectly balanced to keep them on your head without slipping off.
As there are two cables included, each with a microphone, we are happy to note that the shorter mobile cable is actually longer than many other 'mobile cables' that tend to be around 1-1.1m long, and for taller people, it generally isn't enough. That 1.2m length is ideal for taller people, especially if you keep your mobile device in your trouser pocket. As mentioned previously, it is worth noting that both cables have a high quality braiding and are flexible.
Multimedia
Blasting out some bassy electronic music the Cross instantly sounds very bass heavy. It was only after I started to listen to other genres of music, I started to realise despite being bass heavy, the mids and high tones are still well articulated. On listening to some Bon-Jovi, I felt like my ear was torn out and put inside an acoustic guitar, giving me a ground zero seat to the action. Despite the onslaught of bass, it never felt too muddy, producing tight punctuation each time, despite not expecting it to. After a while, I started to enjoy listening to the Cross rumble in my ears. The Cross can also get very loud and at maximum volume it rumbles a lot. On turning is back down to a more reasonable level, I did start to feel that the Cross needs to be listened to at a high volume to really appreciate it as at lower volumes it just feels like someone is mumbling in your ear.
It wasn't until I started a round on CS:GO I thought, 'WOW, the soundstage is impressive'. Considering the closed back nature, and size, I started to appreciate the powerful feedback produced in game by the Cross. Just for additional fun, I played some DOTA 2 (7.00) and a little Skyrim: SE, again the Cross didn't disappoint.
Microphone
The mobile microphone was as expected, providing clear and adequate voice pickup in mobile calls, but it was reported as rather 'scratchy' with interference via the Xbox ONE controller.
The boom microphone sounded deep, natural and featured great noise cancelling. Background typing and mouse clicks were dampened down, as well as any background fan noise. Maximum sensitivity is a little too high, but once backed down a little there is a happy medium to be found (this will depend on your setup/soundcard). The downside to a nice sounding voice was that it perfectly picked up any sniffling, juicy sounds that one may make during certain seasons (or did I mean sessions?).
