So far I am leaning towards the Kulo rather than the Kave as it seems to be more than I need for the extra $25 dollars, especially since I only have an on-board sound card and am mostly just going to be using the thing to play music and videos with.

View video on youtube.com

The main thing I am looking for is durability, which both the Kulo and the Kave offer to varying degrees.

What games on Linux support surround sound?

I have the Kulo headphones and I'm pretty satisfied :) I'm no audiophile, but the sound quality sounds pretty nice to me, provided you have the roccat-tools package installed. If I have any complaint it's that the ear pads on mine come off pretty easily, so they fall off on occasion when I sit them down.

I have settled on the Kulo and purchased it, as well as ordering two more for one of my brothers and my father, as well as two Kaves for my other two brothers. So I guess we will just have to wait and see how well the work. Worst comes to worse we will have just contributed to the coffers of one of the only Linux supporting peripheral manufacturers, so that really can not be construed as being a bad thing.

We have now gotten one Kulo and one Kave delivered, one of which I have taken for myself and so far am pretty happy with. The Kulo seems well constructed and, other than being a bit heavy on the base which I expected from a gaming headset, offers good sound quality. My only other complaint so far is the in-line slim remote is a bit stiff at least on first use, but that will probably change over time. The microphone works as expected as does the fold up mute feature.

I have yet to really play with the USB Virtual 7.1 Surround Sound Card.

The Kave that was ordered for my brother unfortunately shipped with a defect, but we paid extra for free return shipping and RMA replacment, and other than that he so far is fairly happy with the sound quality offered and the surround sound worked without a hitch. So far, not too shabby.