Kraken 2019 vs Kraken Tournament Edition

The Kraken TE and Kraken 2019 are from the same generation of Kraken Headsets. The TE is the better one for PC, since it comes with the USB audio controller that has THX Spatial Surround sound. You can also control volume on the audio controller, along with bass boost and more. Without the audio controller, the TE and Kraken 2019 are pretty much the same. The TE has a slightly better microphone over the Kraken 2019, but if you plan to not use the audio controller, you would be better off buying the Kraken 2019.

Thanks for the great suggestion. I was worried to buy an older product instead of a new one but your post withdraw my worries.

OK, I'm a very unhappy buyer of the Kraken TE, but I'll explain why and the caveats. Dealing with Synapse's THX spatial surround sound is an absolute headache. If you ever change audio outputs, be prepared to be constantly changing your settings around, restarting computer, restarting your games, etc. Granted, maybe you'll have better luck, but whenever I change my audio output to my external speakers and then change back to the Kraken TE, I'm having to change things all the time. Do note, when you buy the TE, you have to have 3 audio outputs: "Kraken TE - Game", "Kraken TE - Chat", and "Kraken TE - THX Spatial Surround". These are supposed to change smoothly, but they don't. One day I'll get an update to Synapse, and poof, gotta mess with settings again to make it work smoothly. Or an update happens, and the THX just doesn't work until I mess with it. I have opened like 3 different support tickets, and had no luck with consistency, so it's not like I haven't tried everything. When it works, it works phenomenally. The THX surround is definitely amazing, I just can't stand messing with it on a weekly basis. I used to have the Kraken 7.1, and it was fantastic. The only reason I bought the TE was because the comfort was top notch. I LOVE the TE's comfort. If the Kraken 2019 has the comfort of the TE, I would toss my TE in the trash and buy the Kraken 2019 in a heartbeat. (And please, support, don't reach out to me again. I am tired of reinstalling Synapse, deleting registry, clean installs, etc. I just don't wanna deal with this anymore. I love Razer, have only Razer peripherals, but just don't like this software based surround sound. Which is a shame because I want that damn Nari Ultimate for the haptics.)

Thanks for your review. I've bought the TE and for now the only problem that I had is that the mixer doesn't output the audio in stereo mode for the selected apps while THX is enabled. To fix it I have to restart synapse. For the rest everything is fine. For now..

I definitely recommend to NOT switch audio outputs, in case you use anything else for audio. Once you get your settings in a place that sounds perfect, don’t switch lol.

Thanks, I rarely use my other speakers. For your problem I suggest you to use VoiceMeeter Banana. Set your default system output to "Kraken TE - THX Spatial Surround" and from the windows 10 audio mixer set the virtual VoiceMeeter's input as the output for the apps that you usually switch output. Then in VoiceMeeter set the outputs to "Kraken TE - Game" and your regular speakers and you are done. In this way you can switch the output of Spotify for example without changing the default settings from windows.

Hmm very interesting. I’ll have to give that a shot. Thanks!